Welcome to Friday’s Featured Female!

Friday's Featured Female, #FFF

 

This weekly series features inspirational stories from admirable women.  IMHO, it’s always good to be reminded of how strength, determination, hard work, heart and ingenuity can impact the quality of one’s life and I’m proud that these women will allow me to share their stories here.

Today, I’m featuring the exceptionally impressive Danielle@TRexRunner.  Danielle blew the room away with her Ignite Presentation at FitBloggin’ 2013 “Learning To Say Yes”.  Her bravery and unique view of the world was refreshing and inspiring.  Danielle started her blog as a way to chronicle her quest to run a marathon in every state (and Washington D.C.) before her 30th birthday in 2015.  In addition to her marathon recaps on her blog, Danielle shares her many facets of struggle from her eating disorder to her recent back surgery.

I try to read all of Danielle’s blog not only because I love to read her running adventures but she was a fabulously wry voice and the way she always finds a way to weave her love for craft beer, travel and wickedly funny GIF’s into her posts is pure genius!

Danielle also writes for Women’s Running and is the co-founder of Ramblen, which provides reviews of health and fitness resources for travelers.  If not for the blogging world, I never would have met this wonderful human being.  The T-Rex Runner blog continues to make me laugh and cry (often in the same post) every time I read it.  Danielle also has an admirable combination of in your face bravery mixed with thoughtfulness, sensitivity and sarcasm that is rarely found.  I’m proud to call Danielle my friend.  You need to meet her if you don’t already know her.  Like right now!

 

So…..have you met Danielle?

Danielle Hastings, The T-Rex Runner, runner, marathoner

How Running Made Me Fearless

 

When most people meet me now, they assume I’ve always been this way – headstrong, independent, and unconcerned with any notion of the way things “should” be done. While I wish I could say that was the case, it’s certainly not; I was a wallflower through most of my adolescence and early adult years. With rock bottom self-esteem and a raging eating disorder, I deferred the important decisions in my life to the people around me. Let’s just say they didn’t always have my best interests at heart. Looking back, I feel sad for that girl because I know how many years she spent afraid of what people would think, say, or do in response to her actions and how devastating the emotional impacts of those consequences were for her. I also feel mad because I didn’t take action to fix the situation sooner.

 

I started running in 2009 as my too-young marriage started to crumble around me and it seemed like nothing was going right. I had no confidence in myself to leave my husband, take care of my house, pay my bills, or anything else. Everything seemed completely impossible, and I was trapped. There was no way out, or so I thought. Never an athlete (I quit my soccer team on the first day of practice when I was 7 because the coach told us to run one lap around the field), the idea of running for any distance seemed ludicrous. One day, I saw some people running down the street, though, and they just looked so happy. For some reason, my desperate brain figured that running must make people happy, and therefore, I figured I too would be happy if I ran. Yes! Running would solve all my problems!

 

Spoiler alert: running didn’t solve all my problems. What it did do was give me confidence in my abilities every single day. Every time I ran farther than I had before or faster than I had before, I slowly started believing that I could do things – hard things – by myself and without anyone’s help. I trained for and ran my first marathon completely alone. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was now powerful.

 

I got divorced. I took care of my house. I paid all the bills by myself. And then, I started traveling to races and running them by myself for no other reason than I wanted to run them and no one wanted to come with me. Was I scared at first? Hell yes. But after awhile, the overwhelming desire to do what I wanted to do overcame the thoughts of what I thought I could do. So I did it.

 

And now, it’s hard to think of anything I truly feel like I can’t do. Practically speaking, of course. I’m unlikely to become the next President or a Zumba instructor – actually, I’d probably be better suited as President – but I can (and did) hike the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu with a girlfriend, fly halfway across the world and navigate the Japanese subway system, and run 44 marathons in 35 different states and 2 countries.  Who would have expected that from a wallflower?

 

Danielle, The T-Rex Runner, marathoner,

 

If you’d like to connect further with Danielle, you can find her via her blog, TRexRunner, like her on Facebook or connect with her on Twitter via @thetrexrunner.   She’s not on Instagram (but she should be).

 

What’s the most unexpected thing you’ve ever done that you’re proud of?