Hearing your stories: Elaheh Nozari

'I was VERY ambivalent about running... I thought it was so boring and had no desire to be good at it. Now, I'm obsessed!'

and

Jun 18, 2025

Morning, friends! ☀️ You may remember a few months ago — hard to believe it was all the way back in February now — when I put out a call to share your stories about how you became a runner and where running has taken you.

Since then, I’ve been blown away by the response and have loved reading every single one of the stories you’ve shared — to be quite honest, I’ve been lagging lately in my own running, but reading these has been getting me inspired to lace up my shoes and get back out there.

I’m especially moved and inspired by today’s story from

Elaheh Nozari

, who juggles a LOT of running with a full-time job and being a mom of very young children, as her youngest was born just a few weeks ago. (And a pair of newsletters! Elaheh, I think I could learn some time management lessons from you 😀)

Anyway, I hope you enjoy her story as much as I did — and, if you feel inspired to share yours too, I’d love to hear it. All you need to is reply back by email or in the comments below, and we’ll go from there. — Terrell

So, let’s hear a little bit about you! Who are you, your age (if you’d like to share), where you’re from, what you do, etc.

My name is Elaheh, I'm 34 and I live on the Upper West Side of Manhattan with my husband, two-year-old daughter, and seven-week-old son! I work in media — my day job is at CNN where I work in business operations but my background is in writing and editing and I keep that up through two newsletters, one about running (

Run the Shoes

) and one about commerce and media (

Delivered

What does your running routine look like? How many times a week, and how far do you run?

It currently looks a little different than "normal" because I'm just getting back into running after having my second child in May. I'm working to get back to my base, which is running five days a week and averaging around 40 miles a week (though that might be a bit ambitious with two small children and a full-time job…)

I’m on maternity leave right now so I have a bit more flexibility to get my workouts in. I still exercise five days a week but I basically have no core strength or aerobic fitness so I do a lot of cross-training (spinning or swimming) and postpartum physical therapy exercises as I gradually start to increase my running load.

Were you an athletic kid growing up? What are your early memories of what fitness and health were about?

I had a pretty quintessential suburban childhood and played a lot of sports because that was the thing to do, but I didn’t excel at any in particular. I played lacrosse and soccer, ran cross-country, and swam. I tried a lot of other sports too; I was pretty into golf for a few summers and joined the basketball team for a week.

I always found fitness and sports to be fun, and I loved the camaraderie of being on a team. I was very studious though and could never figure out how to balance homework and sports, so by junior year of high school, I gave up all sports except cross-country.

But I barely ran. I went to a big high school and there were more than 60 girls on the cross-country team, about half who were there just to socialize, including me.

How did you first get into running? Was there something that inspired you — like a performance at the Olympics, for example, or a runner you discovered by watching them on social media or TV? Or was there someone in your own life who inspired you to think, ‘maybe I can do this?’

My parents were and still are very into fitness; my mom in particular was a big runner when I was in middle and high school. I grew up about 40 minutes outside of New York City, and we would go into the city on weekends for her to run New York Road Runner races.

Once when I was around 12, both my parents ran a race and they parked me next to a tree in Central Park and told me not to move until they finished. (I didn't!) Anyway, the concept of going for a run and running races on weekends was just a natural thing to do in my family.

I ran off and on after high school but didn’t start a consistent running routine until after I graduated college and needed an outlet for my mental health. I found running, especially long runs, to be very meditative.

How has your interest in running evolved since then? Do you run farther, or faster now?

I was VERY ambivalent about running when I was on the cross-country team, I thought it was so boring and had no desire to be good at it. Now, I'm obsessed!

I ran my first marathon when I was 26. I signed up because I really just enjoyed the ritual of long runs and thought I might as well work towards the marathon distance. I didn’t pay much attention to my pace but I ran it in 3:43.

After that, I realized I could try to qualify for Boston, and I eventually did. I really love the marathon and I’ve honestly just become addicted to running that distance as fast as I can. It's really empowering to push myself physically and see what I'm capable of.

What do you balance your running with? Do you have a family to take care of? Kids, parents or other relatives or loved ones? If so, how do you balance all of it and still make time to run/care for yourself?

A lot! It feels a little impossible to balance running with having two small children and a job and all the other things that come with managing a household. But I don’t feel like myself unless I’m running and have a race to train for, so really any free time I have in a day is dedicated to running, or doing something that improves my running.

During a typical work week, I work two to three days from home, so I’m able to run in the time between daycare drop off and signing on (I usually spend the day in my sweaty workout clothes but it's a sacrifice I'm willing to make). I don't usually run on days I go to the office, but sometimes I'll run home from work.

My husband also runs, and we each get a weekend morning that’s our long run time while the other is on childcare duty. I’m also incredibly lucky that my parents live a few blocks away and are almost always available to babysit — my weekday runs right now revolve around their schedule since my husband is back at work. I wouldn't be able to keep up my running routine without my parents' help.

Is there anything you’re especially proud of that you can point to your running and say, ‘this helped me achieve ______’?

One of the reasons I love running is because it’s such a pure example of how hard work pays off. The more you put in, the more you get out of it. And I think that attitude has helped me in my career.

I made a big leap a few years ago from the editorial side of media to the business side, and it took a lot of resilience and hard work to keep powering through all the rejections from people who told me I needed an MBA or more business experience to make the switch.

What have you learned about yourself from your running journey? Is there anything that’s changed about you since you started?

I used to think I was the type of person to quit things when they got hard, but running has shown me that I'm, in fact, quite resilient! When I ran the New York City Marathon in 2021, I got such bad stomach pains around mile 22. It was my first marathon post-Covid race cancellations, and I was trying to qualify for Boston.

As I was running down 5th Avenue, I started crying because I knew I wasn't going to hit my goal. I saw my husband and parents cheering and ran to them and just sat on the curb, ready to call it quits. Then a stranger gave me a bottle of water and told me to keep going, and it just turned something on in me.

I got up, booked it to the finish, and ended up qualifying with 30 seconds to spare. It really taught me to push through when things get hard — you can still reach your goals.

Where would you like to go with your running? Is there anything special you’d like to achieve — like, say, running all six World Marathon Majors, or running an ultra?

For now, I'd like to break three hours in the marathon.

Before I had kids, I was ultra-curious. I did a guided run around Mont Blanc during UTMB (Ultra Trail du Mont Blanc) in 2019 and just thought it was the coolest thing ever, and I briefly got into trail running.

I did a few trail races and trained for a 50K, but the combination of living in New York City and having small children makes it logistically impossible. Something to look forward to when I'm an empty nester, I guess!

What keeps you going? Especially if you’ve been running for a while — do you ever get bored with it? How do you find new things to motivate you, to keep you going?

Luckily, I haven't gotten bored of it in the last few years because I've either been pregnant or postpartum and I've just been hungry to get back to my "normal" fitness level.

But typically, I try to break my running into seasons where I focus on different distances, and that's helped keep me motivated. For a few months I'll focus on the marathon, but I can't run more than one a year at this point, so then I'll find a 5K or 10K to focus on.

I also love traveling for races or going on a "runcation." The group run I did around Mont Blanc was so fun (it was with a company called Run the Alps) and reinvigorated my love of running at a time when I felt like I was taking it too seriously.

I met a ton of people, soaked up a new running culture, and got to see a new place. That's another thing that will have to wait until my children are older, I think!

Look back at yourself when you were a kid, maybe say 10 years old. Remember how you felt, what you thought, especially what you thought you were capable of back then. If you could talk to that kid now, what would you say?

Hmm... this is a tough one. I was always intimidated by people who were singularly focused on sports, so I would tell myself that you can be good at sports while still having a life outside of them. I'd also tell myself to just keep working hard, because it does pay off!