This Is What It Feels Like

Hello! Welcome back to Footprint – and happy Friday. Best of luck to everyone racing in Chamonix, Sydney and beyond over the next few days.

What makes someone a runner? This sport has its fair share of gatekeepers, who suggest you need to finish a certain number of races, run at a certain pace, or have a certain pair of shoes, before you truly belong.

Nonsense, says pro marathoner Keira D’Amato, who has grappled with this sport from a lot of angles – from struggling to run for 90 seconds to breaking US records, and all else in-between.

“There’s not a certain time you hit, or a certain distance you can run,” D’Amato told Footprint in an interview for today’s edition. “Everyone is a runner,” she said, “even if they’ve never run a step in their life. They are just a runner who hasn’t run yet.”

Worth remembering, next time you’re on a start line. “I don’t think me getting there quicker makes me any more of a runner than anyone else,” added D’Amato.

☀ Keira D’Amato on the power of positivity and showing up – in running, and beyond

🗽 Parkrun lands in New York: Euan Bowman, its territory manager for North America, on what makes it special

🪃 Sydney prepares for its first Major marathon weekend

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Sixteen miles into the Houston Marathon, Keira D’Amato didn’t know how much longer her legs could take it. She was hanging on for dear life, contemplating if she could make it another mile – let alone another ten. 

This is the moment she credits Calum Neff, one of her pacers, with reading her mind and delivering a mantra that fundamentally reframed how she looked at that race, and challenges to this day: this is what it feels like. 

That morning in January 2022, D’Amato had set out to run a marathon faster than she, or any other American woman, had run before. The record had stood for nearly 16 years for good reason. 

“So when he said that, it was so deep,” she told Footprint. “Because it’s like, yeah, I’m trying to do something that no other American woman has ever done. That’s not going to be easy. It’s going to be really hard.  

“And what I’m feeling right now is what it feels like to be accomplishing that goal. This is what it feels like to go after something so scary, and so big.” 

It helped her press on, and bat away the inevitable doubts. Maybe I can’t do this. Maybe I should slow down. Maybe today is not my day. 

She could do it. She didn’t slow down. And ultimately, it was her day. D’Amato finished in 2:19:12, becoming the first woman to break the American marathon record since 2006. 

“Instead of being fearful, of feeling like a victim, you’re put into a power position,” she said. “It’s powerful – this is what it feels like – I’m on my way, and this is the journey.” 

Neff, for his part, had also worried the race was slipping away, but credits his exchange with D’Amato (he described it as “a bit of an epiphany” in an email to Footprint) with helping turn things around. 

“It truly unlocked the mind-body connection, and allowed us both to run our best that day,” said Neff. After a long slog into a gust of wind in the final stages of the race, they embraced at the finish, shedding tears of disbelief. 

• • •

D’Amato reflects on that day in Texas, and the many successes and setbacks she has enjoyed and endured before and since, in Don’t Call It a Comeback, a part-memoir, part-guide to what she’s learned during her journey so far, written with the journalist Evelyn Spence. 

Her story is unique. She had assumed her dream to become an elite runner was killed by injury in her early twenties, only to return – with an altogether different perspective – in her early thirties, and climb to the top. She refers to the eight years she spent away from the sport as her half-time show. 

“In Round One I was looking for a certain performance, so I could be happy,” D’Amato told Footprint. “In Round Two I decided I don’t need that. I could be happy, day-to-day. Happiness isn’t a destination that you’re looking to get to; it’s something you can strive for, every day.”

This indefatigably positive outlook is perhaps best outlined by a short passage in the book in which D’Amato sets out her approach to two words which most runners – most people – encounter while doing hard things: what if? 

What if I haven’t done enough? What if I struggle? What if I stop? What if I fail? The D’Amato Doctrine flips those questions over, and asks them out of excitement, rather than anxiety. What if I do it? 

“It might be a little instinctive for me,” acknowledged D’Amato, “but I think it took me years and years and years to learn. Bottom line: if you don’t show up, and you don’t take a shot, you’re never going to make it.

“The more you put yourself out there, I think I’ve lived with that little percentage that it could happen.” 

It’s an approach built on hope, rather than fear. Once you’ve found it, she said, the key is to hold on, through good times and bad. 

After every race on a track, D’Amato says never again – so fans might have been a bit surprised to see her near the front of the pack for most of the 10,000m at last month’s US Championships. “I was in really great 10k shape, and I was like, what if I make the team?” she explained.

Ultimately, she finished seventh. “It was still a good day.”

The focus has shifted to marathon season. D’Amato is due to race the Copenhagen half marathon next month, before another (to be announced) marathon. 

She is holding onto hope that she can push even further, even faster, than she already has. “That’s hard to do,” noted D’Amato. “Because with the unknown, there could be positive or negative. It could go your way. It could not. And most of the time it probably won’t.

“I think just accepting that – but with that little bit of hope – is just enough to throw yourself out there, and say ‘yes’, and just see what happens.”

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How do you describe parkrun to the uninitiated? Euan Bowman points to Twinkies. “You don’t know what it is until you have it,” he said of the iconic American snack. 

“Parkrun’s a bit like that,” added Bowman, the running community network’s territory manager for North America. “You don’t really get it until you show up, and you see what it’s like.” 

Hundreds of thousands of people take part in parkrun’s free, volunteer-led 5Ks each weekend. It’s a run, not a race. Community, not competition, is the focus. 

The UK, where it was first set up two decades ago, has 869 parkrun locations. Australia has 521. South Africa has 226. The US has 92 – so far. 

While Bowman estimated around 75% of people in the UK know what parkrun is, he would be surprised if that figure was as high as 1% in the US. This “is not an issue,” he added. “It’s an opportunity.” 

And it’s an opportunity parkrun has taken in New York City. More than 500 runners took part in the inaugural event in Brookyln Bridge Park last Saturday, hailing the event’s arrival in a city where demand for running events has surged in recent years. 

“I honestly didn’t foresee that many people coming along,” said Bowman. “It was really special, actually. It was everything that I wanted it to be.” 

Adored by regulars and credited by academics with increasing life satisfaction, parkrun has been called a global phenomenon. 

In each location, it swings the door wide open – welcoming anyone, regardless of experience or ability – and tries to build a community around a weekly run. Time and again, across much of the world, this has proven to be a powerful combination. 

Parkrun has ambitious plans for North America, where it has introduced another 25 events so far this year, and hopes to sustain that growth over the year ahead.  

Bowman, who oversees all parkrun events across the US and Canada, has a busy job. Sometimes he’ll get to Friday night, after a long week, and wonder if he should skip the next morning’s parkrun to send a few more emails. 

“And, obviously I do show up,” Bowman hastily added. “And then when you go to parkrun, you meet people, and you’re like, ‘oh yeah,’” he said, “‘I can’t believe I almost missed this.’”

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As six World Major marathons become seven, some 35,000 runners are gearing up for Sunday’s Sydney Marathon – the biggest ever race in Oceania, according to organizers.

“I have never seen so much water,” Olympic marathon champion Sifan Hassan, one of the favorites this weekend, laughed earlier this week after landing in Sydney.

Race director Wayne Larden said the city is excited to host the newest major marathon, and cheer on a field that includes Hassan, Eliud Kipchoge, and more than a few Footprint readers.

“There won’t be one person who lives in Sydney who will not know that the greatest marathon runners of all time are running through the streets of Sydney,” Larden told Marathon Talk, with a nod to Kipchoge. “And what parent isn’t going to want to bring their kids out to see these athletes race through Sydney for the first time – and maybe the last time?”

Best of luck to everyone running.