About

I'm Katie :) This space is meant to be a safe, empowering, and sometimes silly place for people to come read about my adventures in marathon training, my involvement in science and research, and my new job as Project Coordinator in the psychology department of my university.

Beginning in the summer of 2015 I started making some pretty big life changes; some good, some bad, and lots of mistakes and lessons along the way. I won't go into details for fear of over-sharing but it was definitely a very challenging and very exhilarating time, and continues to be a little bit of both even now. Also during that time, I was preparing to run the Chicago Marathon - my second marathon. I had run Chicago in 2014 and earned a Boston bid,  and I knew I wanted to go back. Now I just ran my second Chicago in October and am preparing to run Boston 2016. Marathoning is a huge outlet for me. I think I'm at my best physically, mentally, and emotionally in the middle of a good training cycle. 

I was heavily involved in undergraduate research at my university. I am currently in the thick of an independent research project in which I am examining athletes' cognitions and how these cognitions can make them more at risk for elevated factors that contribute to suicidality. Athletes are one of my favorite populations to study and I hope to spend my life working with this group.

That being said, my background education in psychology and research has made me very open about discussing mental health and the importance of doing what we can do to maintain good mental health and promote awareness of mental disorders. These are illnesses just like diabetes, fibromyalgia, and other physical disorders and need to be treated as such. The recent loss of someone from my high school community to suicide as been eye-opening and a personally painful reminder of how critical it is to normalize open discussion about these issues. 

I'm also a writer. Some of you might know about my previous blog, "Let Her Run," where I wrote about my early years in college, my transition into becoming a long-distance runner, and my adventures traveling throughout Europe. The purpose of my rebranding is to hopefully gain a fresh, clean start and open a new chapter with a new blog :)