Running gives me a unique sense of freedom

I am Valeria, I was born in La Paz, Bolivia and currently I work managing a Chain of Gyms, here in Bolivia.

I have been into sports since forever, I always liked physical activity, when I was little I used to play golf, I participated in several National and International competitions, then growing up I tried different sports and I discovered athletics when I was in Kansas City in an exchange student program, I even had the opportunity to be part of the cross country team.

After that first experience I never stopped running because I loved it, listening to music and running gives me a unique sense of freedom.

When I returned to my country after graduating from university, I started running in the gym and I found a group of runners called Run4fun who invited me to be part of their practices.

Is in this group where I met Eduardo who is currently my husband and partner in adventures. Our first goal together was to run the half marathon in Cotoca, Santa Cruz. We trained hard for that, and we achieved our goal. Later on, we encouraged ourselves to register for the Santiago de Chile Marathon and we trained for several months, also reaching the finish line in about 4 hours and 32 minutes.

Eduardo, before meeting me, also practiced triathlon so he motivated me to start swimming and start riding bike to complement the running and make it a little more entertaining. 

Since then, we managed to finish two full IRONMAN, in which we had to swim 3.8km, 180km in bike and finish with a full marathon, among other competitions we did 6 HALF IRONMAN that are half the distance of the full one. We are currently training for another full Ironman competition.

I think for any sports and actually for everything in life the main motivation should always be to be a better version of yourself, be better than yesterday, basically we all run our own marathon, and your main competition is yourself and your mind.

One of my main challenges for me was to overcome a lot of injuries. A couple of years ago I had to ankle surgery and for 9 months I couldn’t do what I was passionate about.

As in life there are learnings and achievements, for me my main achievement besides all the Ironman and Marathons that I have finished has been to learn how to swim and ride a bike being old, this is something I’m really proud of and this all started with a half marathon challenge.

Running has given me so much learnings, satisfactions, a group of friends that enjoy this sport as I do and above all a partner in crime to all the next adventures to come

Valeria
Santa Cruz, Bolivia
1 Times Marathon Finisher