year 1: exploring a new city
fall 2020I’m an avid runner, and the stresses of this quarter (and 2020) have made me realize how integral running is to my mental health. All I need to do is tie my shoelaces and head out the door and I almost instantly feel better about whatever it is that is weighing me down—my classes, the news, the pandemic, etc. There is an added bonus of being outside in nature and away from my tiny dorm room. This quarter, I have loved exploring Seattle through the running routes that crisscross the city. The Burke Gilman, as you can see from this heat map, is my most frequented route, but I also love Green Lake and the Arboretum. Running around the city allows me to be acquainted (sometimes too intimately...there are a lot of rats) with this place that I get to call home for the next few years.
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spring 2021I'm done with my first year of college! Wow. It feels surreal (almost like I've been learning through a screen this whole time...). Despite the challenges of this year, I feel really proud of myself. And I honestly feel that running has been a major contributor to my sanity. I've gotten to know and love Seattle so much more in these breaks from stress and academics. This quarter, I've also had so much fun running with the Husky Running Club, which just started meeting in-person! It's been such a joy to run with others again and I've gotten to meet so many cool people. To commemorate how important running continues to be in my life, I made another heat map to show how many more routes I've explored since the end of my first quarter at UW.
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year 2: finding my people
fall 2021
I ran the Seattle Marathon this quarter (left, me at the first line in November, 2021). Running a marathon has been on my bucket list for years, so I'm really proud of myself for training for and finishing this race during such a busy quarter. The training was made even better by the many new friends I made at Husky Running Club (pictured on the right at the Dawg Dash 5k in October, 2021).
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year 3: making things happen
spring 2023
I have been the President of Husky Running Club for the past year, and I have learned so much about leadership in the process. I consider myself a very organized person, but I didn't realize how much I had to learn about organizing a group of people into action. Through the support of the other wonderful officers, I learned how to effectively manage a group of people and use organizational tools like Google Drive to their full effect. I am most proud of the fact that our club raised over $7000 by fundraising this year (an unprecedented amount!) and hosted our Paws for a Cause charity 5k race (map to the left) for the first time since 2019. We raised over $300 for the charity United in Stride, which helps pair visually impaired runners and sighted guides.
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summer 2023
This summer I reconnected with my love of running after a few quarters of having running be a means to get some exercise in as efficiently as possible in the chaos of school and life. I started marathon training this summer, so I had an excuse to explore the city of Hannover where I lived through long runs (heat map to the left and pictures of my favorite Hannover runs below!). It's called the Garden City because of all of the parks and trails and I LOVED living in such a runnable city. My favorite discovery was a nearby park where a ton of boars were kept in an enclosure (this Tiergarten has existed since the 17th century!)! I had never seen boars before this (and, comically, my main association was with Robert Baratheon from Game of Thrones) and absolutely loved to run to the park to watch them run around!
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I also made new friends through running this summer! I loved going on runs with one of the other interns living in Hannover, but also, while I was at the meeting for all of the DAAD RISE interns across Germany at the beginning of the summer, I spotted another intern was wearing a Garmin watch and so I asked her if she was a runner. She was! And it turns out she had signed up for a half marathon in Füssen in Bavaria a couple of weeks later, which she invited me to. I was immediately game and signed up for the race, despite having only known her for all of 15 minutes. It ended up being a super fun weekend (photo from the half marathon to the left) and a great way to explore Bavaria, including Munich, for the weekend. I love runners!
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year 4: another marathon in the books!
fall 2023
I did the New York City marathon this fall! I had a slight PR from my last marathon (the Seattle in 2021), which I was pretty happy with considering that I got injured right before the race. The energy running through all of the boroughs (especially Brooklyn) was wild! There were so many supporters out and about and it was striking to see how much a single race can transform a city. I definitely want to do more big marathons like this!