A MESSAGE FROM Sarah Olson
This year, I am running the 2026 TCS New York City Marathon
with RESOLVE: The National Infertility and Family Building Association! I’m fundraising to support RESOLVE’s mission and asking you
to help me get to that starting line. I cannot do it without your support!
I am so honored to be have chosen by RESOLVE to represent them at the NYC Marathon. This organization is very dear to my heart and being able to run my 4th marathon for my 40th birthday while raising awareness for infertility, loss, and everything that goes with it, is just truly the only thing I can think of to do. Especially when 2026 will be exactly 10 years since we started our family building journey and it has been 10 years of struggle, heartbreak and years of realizing we will be living a life different from what we imagined.
In 2016 I married the love of my life and since I was already feeling like an old lady I wanted to jump into making a family right away. We had no idea what was in store for us. We went through years of infertility treatments, tests, doctors appts, and bills after bills after bills and never was able to get find out why we could not get pregnant. Unexplained infertility was all they would tell me. After about 4 years of bad news and no pregnancies I was finally told IVF won't work for you (we couldn't afford it if it could) and you just will not be able to get pregnant. I also want to add that I was one of the few who found a man who came with a bonus. He had a daughter and I am forever grateful for her. She is part of what kept me going through all of this. She has grown up these past 10 years into a beautiful amazing woman and I am just so lucky to get to call her my bonus daughter. Even though we have her in our lives to be honest though; Its just not the same as having a child of your own and getting to hear them call you Mom and see everyday. I do get told a lot that I need to just be grateful and move on. I have her in my life and that should be good enough. Don't get me wrong. I am beyond grateful everyday for her. Until you go through infertility and loss sometimes its just not something you can fully understand.
I had to come to a realization that the life we had planned for was not what was in store for us. I head dived into a deep depression. I was able to see I was not in a good place and went and found the absolute best therapist a girl could have. Therapy helped in so many ways but I was still struggling. When my therapist suggested I try exercise like running I thought she was out of her mind. After giving it some thought I decided "Hey, what could it hurt to give this a go?" And I did. What happened next I would have never imagined. Running helped me so much with my mental health and gave me something to focus all my anger, sadness, anxieties, embarrassment, depression, fears, and at the time hatred for myself on. I went from I will just run a 5k to running my first half marathon within no time. I was doing so great!
Then we spontaneously got pregnant. The doctors were shocked and could not tell me how it happened but it had. We were beyond excited. The life we had thought could not happen was going to come true. When you get pregnant you instantly start to make plans and not just pregnancy plans but plans for your entire life with this child. We were on top of the world. So when we walked into the doctors appointment with happiness and high hopes in hearts and get told "I'm sorry, there is no heartbeat." To say the world comes crashing down is an understatement.
I had made so much progress in running and with my mental health and this set me back so far. I was angry at myself and at the world. Thankfully I had an amazing support system already in place. I was able to focus my emotions and I had an idea. My body may not be able to do the one thing a woman's body should do but it is sure going to do something that only 1% of the worlds population has done. I am going to run a marathon!
I spent the rest of the year training and focusing all my energy on running my first marathon. It was a huge emotional rollercoaster but for good. When I crossed that finish line I was so proud of myself that I could not and still cannot put it into words. For the first time in a very long time I did not hate myself or my body. I just ran 26.2 miles! I did that. My body did that!
Running has been my saving grace ever since. It has helped me on good days and on bad days. It has even helped me make new friends. That is a whole other anxiety issue I have and running has helped me break that barrier.
Since then I have continued to run. I have ran 2 more marathons. Handfuls of half marathons and I will hit my 40th 5k this year too. How perfect! Running has become my identity and I am okay with that. Through all these years of infertility struggles and having to find a new me and new "what is our life going to look like" I am okay with being the girl who runs a lot. So when I was thinking about my 40th birthday I knew I had to run a marathon again. When it was going to be my 4th marathon for my 40th was even better. A good friend I have met along the way in my journey helped me realize that running the NYC marathon, a once in a lifetime opportunity for me, was exactly what I needed.
Being able to run NYC for RESOLVE means the world to me. This is an organization that I discovered along my journey. It helped me to not feel so alone. Helped me know that there were others out there like us struggling and that we had nothing to be ashamed of. So please find it in your hearts to help make my dream of running the 2026 NYC Marathon for my 40th birthday come true. I need your help to get my foot to that starting line.
Your donation will make a real difference in protecting the future
of family building. As a nonprofit dedicated to ensuring everyone has the
opportunity to build their family, RESOLVE is working tirelessly to protect and
expand access to IVF across the country. But they need our support to continue
this vital work.
Donating through this website is simple, fast and secure. It
is also the most efficient way to support me in my participation in the 2026 TCS New York City Marathon. Many thanks for your support -- and
don't forget to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate
too! I am forever grateful for your donation and help and support for my journey.
And please feel free to follow along with my training journey! Instagram: @running2agreatphoto & TikTok: @sarahoruns (P.S. I am still learning how to use tiktok! )
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