“I kind of made the decision that I was kind of tired of MALS controlling my life, and that even if surgery was after … I was gonna cross that finish line. Luckily, surgery was the shortest amount of time away from the marathon that would give me enough time to have surgery, recover, finish training in like a reasonable enough amount of time, and then run.”

“There weren’t, like, crowds lining the streets, but I had an overwhelming amount of friends who set up like a fake Marathon Monday set up on Mile 21. Just like when I got to the top of Heartbreak Hill, I could hear everyone screaming, and then they all got in their cars and raced to the finish line to be there, so it was pretty amazing.”

“Even for my short runs, just to literally be like, ‘Okay I know that house, like, I know how far I am from BC or … markers that I could, you know, like latch on to and be like, ‘Okay I know where I am. This is familiar. Like, it sucks, but I’ve gotten to the top of it a bajillion times. I can do it again.’”

“To pass BC knowing that there are people who are kind of following me on the tracking app and who were waiting and all the people who didn’t know me but they still saw my BC jersey and stuff so passing it was just kind of a lot of joy. You know I wasn’t thinking I’d be smiling so much running through there, but I was.” 

“Over time, like as I grew, I was able to kind of learn more about the foundation and get more involved with it, and just kind of see I was, like, really inspired by the other runners, being able to raise money and just kind of crossing the finish line for us and [our] foundation. Coming into BC, I learned how big of a holiday Marathon Monday was on campus, and that kind of made me, kind of, fall in love with it more.”