Why Running Divas?

Why I Started Running Divas

By Running Divas Founder Erica King – registered fitness professional; accredited run coach; nutritional consultant; psychologist; passionate marathon runner – completed 30 marathons including all World Majors.

I was 38, overworked, unfit, overweight and feeling that ‘there must be more to life’ so decided that I needed a new challenge.

After lots of reflection I decided to try something that I had never done before – to learn to run.

To really motivate myself I thought ‘what is the most difficult challenge in running’ – a marathon and if I was going to run a marathon ‘where in the world should that be’ – New York.

I slogged it out alone for 10 months, increasing my kms very slowly each week. There were no run training resources specifically for women at this time, so I just made it up as I went along.

Running Divas started as a blog of my run journey.

Finally, after my hard training I was standing at the starting line on Statton Island in New York with 30,000 runners from all over the world, listening to a band play New York, New York. It was 6 degrees celcius, icy wind and I could not have felt more excited in my life.

The entire race route was lined with hundreds of thousands of cheering, enthusiastic spectators and to cross the finish line in Central park was unbelievably emotional - with tears of joy and every part of my body screaming I had just run 42.2kms for the very first time.

I now knew that I could truly achieve anything that I set my mind to.

Running Divas evolved into a website for women who also wanted to achieve something that they never imagined was possible.

I never want women to have to be alone on their run journey, so the Running Divas community provides the most extraordinary motivation, support and inspiration every single day. This is something that I am extremely proud of and why Running Divas is such an important part of my life.

It has and continues to be my passion to make a real and lasting difference for women.

We are literally ‘changing women’s lives one run at a time’.

Fast forward 16 years and I have run 30 marathons worldwide, including all of the World Major Marathons (New York, Boston, London, Berlin, Tokyo, Chicago). I also swapped candles and a birthday cake to celebrate my 50^thbirthday by running 12 marathons in 12 months.

If I can do this, so can anyone who makes the decision to push their boundaries.