Running gave me a foundation. Help me give that to kids who need it.
I wasn't always a runner. For most of my life, running was something I did because I had to — a fitness test, a formation, a requirement. It wasn't until I was deployed to a Forward Operating Site in Poland, in the weeks after Russia invaded Ukraine, that running became something else entirely.
Our world shrank to about 1,000 by 800 meters of dirt. The only sanctioned reason to leave the wire was for physical training. So every day, I ran — through the training areas surrounding the base, through the trees, through whatever weather came. What started as the only available escape became, over weeks, something I genuinely looked forward to. Running kept me grounded when the world felt unstable. It gave me structure, clarity, and a few miles of quiet in the middle of an anything-but-quiet deployment.
That love of running has stayed with me for four years now. But when I think about what I'm really running toward on November 1st, I keep coming back to something further upstream — the role that athletics and physical competition played in making me who I am long before I ever laced up for a road race.
Youth athletics gave me my foundation. The discipline of showing up, the lessons of losing and winning, the understanding that your body is capable of more than you think — those aren't lessons that came from a classroom. They came from competing, from coaches who pushed me, from teammates who held me accountable. That foundation is part of what allowed me to earn a spot at West Point, to lead soldiers as an Army officer, and to pursue an MBA at NYU Stern. I don't take any of that for granted, and I don't believe it happens without sport.
Not every kid gets that. Not every kid has access to programs, to coaches, to the simple experience of running alongside someone who believes they're capable. That's what Team for Kids and NYRR are working to change — providing free youth running programs that remove barriers and give kids something to build on.
Every dollar of my $3,000 goal goes directly toward making those programs possible. If running gave me the clarity to get through a deployment and the foundation to chase every goal that followed, I can only imagine what it might do for a kid who's never had the chance.
I'd be grateful for your support — at any level. Thank you for helping me make these 26.2 miles mean something.
