Martyna’s Run for Hope

I was born and raised in a cycling community in Poland. My first cycling race was probably at about 3 years old, still with supporting wheels. Most weekends, my family spent on cheering on and racing with my dad, who was an amazing and highly competitive athlete. But cycling was never my passion. I was also the slowest kid in the class. I wanted to do sports so bad but I was so much slower than other kids. Until I started training for my first 10k with my dad. I’ll never forget the moment when, at the age of 15, I had to run for 600 meters, and I realized that yes, all the kids were faster than me, but only for a lap or two around the track. After the 3rd lap, everyone got tired and slowed down… and I kept going - for the first time in my life finishing first in my class.

In 2018, I ran my first marathon - the New York City marathon. I was 22 years old. For the next four years, I was happily married to Andrew, who was a personal trainer. We always somehow stayed active together, but I never fully committed to running again. Until he was killed in a car accident in October 2022. For over a year, I was partying, drinking too much, throwing up multiple times a week, and not eating enough. Physically and mentally, I was a shell of who I used to be. Then I received another NYC marathon entry, and that motivated me to go back to running and start taking care of myself. It was slow and painful - my old foot injury came back, and it took me over 6 hours to finish that race. At that time, I wasn’t healed or ready, but it was the start of something new. A new beginning of spending my weekends at local trail races instead of day drinking. Soon enough, I moved to Austin, TX, and joined multiple run clubs. In June 2024, I went to my first Body Art Run Club meetup… and the rest is history.

Within less than two years, I went from struggling to run a 5k to running 167 miles from Austin to Houston. I went from having severe anxiety, depression, and suicidal thoughts to absolutely loving everything about my life. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still grieving and some days are harder than others, but there’s hope. There’s the feeling that maybe, just maybe, life is not as bad and hopeless as I thought it was.

Running keeps me going, literally. It rewired my brain, gave me a purpose, a reason to live. My mind is no longer racing a thousand miles a minute, my legs tookover that task. Of course, anxiety is still there, but it’s manageable. I can live with it. All I’ve got to do is keep moving… one day at a time, one foot in front of the other.