Runner, running coach, and podcaster Julie Sapper is on Women's Running Stories! Her story here is focused on her return from a long-term injury: an ACL tear. She tells about her thorough approach to healing and recovery and the nonlinear path to returning to running injury-free, all the way to returning to her ultimate goal: running the Boston Marathon, for her 13th time. Sapper was so thoughtful and complete through this process—"I wanted to get a PR in recovery," she says—she has a lot of gre...
Jul 08, 2025•45 min
This episode features runner, adventurer, and creator of the wildly popular Tough Girl podcast and Tough Girl Challenges, Sarah Williams. These days, Sarah is well known for taking on incredible challenges, but it wasn't always that way. Here, Sarah tells her adventuring lifestyle origin story: how she transitioned from working in wealth management in London to exploring the world through epic adventures to challenge herself, to motivate other women, and to raise the visibility of women adventur...
Jul 01, 2025•1 hr 3 min
This episode features the running story of Mireille Siné, a marathon and ultra runner, a coach, and so much more. And intertwined into Mireille’s running journey is an autoimmune condition she’s been navigating since college: lupus. Since childhood, being active and participating in sports has been part of Mireille’s life, and that included running. Running became a more central part of her athletic journey through college and after. Now in her mid-30s, Mireille has completed numerous half marat...
Jun 24, 2025•44 min
I am bringing you a reair of a terrific episode. I'm taking this one-week break because I've been working on a new project that we just announced, and that I know you'll be excited about: the podcast EARTHMOVERS, with Alison Mariella Désir, Stefanie Flippin, Verna NezBegay Volker. It will launch Aug 14. Keep up with news and information about EARTHMOVERS now on Instagram: @EARTHMOVERSpodcast. I'll be back next week with a new episode of WRS. In the meantime, this is a great one: enjoy again or f...
Jun 17, 2025•59 min
This is a special live report from the inaugural We Out Here Trail Festival that just happened this last weekend on June 7, 2025. It took place outside Seattle, WA, at St. Edwards State Park. The trail scene is and has long been the whitest, most male dominated sector of the running world. Instead of continuing to wait for the system to change, RDs Aaliyah Earvin and Alison Mariella Désir stepped up and made the event that they have wanted to see for a long, long time, and that they knew was pos...
Jun 10, 2025•1 hr 1 min
Sara Aranda is a trail runner and outdoor adventurer who has developed a strong interest in going after FKTs, fastest known times. But her outdoor passions are about much more than setting records: Aranda's motivations are spurred by processing life and death, grief and hope, fear and joy. Aranda's passion for trail running began while she was in college. It was a space where she could process the death of her mother, who'd died after many years of fighting breast cancer. Aranda herself then had...
Jun 03, 2025•54 min
Becky Croft’s life experiences have led her to becoming not only a performance minded runner but also a sought-after running coach. She’s developed a specialty in guiding runners through their menopausal years—pre and post. Croft brings her own experience of post-hysterectomy menopause, which resulted from of a long history of endometriosis. Croft shares her whole running story, which began later in life, in her 30s. She discovered her competitive mindset early in her running journey, and has be...
May 27, 2025•32 min
Jessica Mena is a longtime runner now focused on ultra trail running. She’s continually driven to discover what she is capable of: beginning with her first marathon, at age 12!, to today, as she explores running long distances on the trails. This episode focuses on Mena reaching one of her biggest goals yet: running 100 kilometers (62 miles) over hilly trails. She shares how it all went down, along with the running journey that got her to this point. In addition to being a runner, Mena is a phys...
May 20, 2025•37 min
This is an update from me, WRS host and producer Cherie Louise Turner, about my running, training, and racing. This picks up from where the last episode of the Over 50, Sub 20, 5k Project, Part 9, left off. As I mentioned in my last episode, I have decided to stop focusing so completely on this sub-20 minute 5k goal, so am just calling these running updates. I still have a sub-20 goal, but it's not my all-consuming singular focus. This update covers the time period between mid-March and mid-May ...
May 13, 2025•43 min
Angel Tadytin shares the epic story of her first 50-mile trail race, and how it unfolded in unexpected and magical ways. Tadytin is a wife, mother, social worker, and ultra runner, and she is from the Navajo Nation. She and her family currently live in Mesa, Arizona, but she’s originally from Page, Arizona, and the surrounding area. Tadytin is also a lifelong hiker and outdoor explorer, and a longtime weightlifter. In addition, Tadytin is a community builder and currently is a board member of Na...
May 06, 2025•1 hr 3 min
This is a live recording from Sunday, April 20 at the Boston Marathon Expo. Once again, WRS host Cherie Turner teamed up with Julie Sapper and Lisa Levin from the Run Farther and Faster podcast to co-host an excellent panel. This year's panel was titled Mental Strategies for Mastering the Marathon, and it featured exceptional masters marathoners Stephanie Bruce, Erica Stanley-Dottin, and Dot McMahon. These women shared wisdom and experience on strategies for developing mental strength and resili...
Apr 29, 2025•49 min
This episode features prolific marathon runner and internationally competitive masters racer Gwen Jacobson. Jacobson, who is 66, got started running in 2010, when she was in her 50s. She has run many distances, but without question she has the greatest affinity for the marathon: in the last 15 years, Jacobson has run over 120 marathons as well as one 50k. In addition to loving the 26.2 mile distance, Jacobson loves big challenges and she is very goal oriented. So, for instance, she has completed...
Apr 22, 2025•35 min
This episode features Alia Qatarneh, whose running story is deeply infused with community and leadership, especially through the Boston area based TrailblazHers Run Co. Her story highlights the way the three forces of running, community, and leadership have coalesced to drive her running journey. And how that's led to her running the 2023 Boston Marathon—her first time running 26.2 miles—and then to running the 2024 Boston City 26.TRUE marathon, which she'll be running again this year, 2025: 26,...
Apr 15, 2025•43 min
This is a special live recording featuring professional runner and 3x national champion Annie Rodenfels, in conversation with WRS host and producer Cherie; that's me. We sat down at the Tracksmith track house in Boston on Sat., March 22, with a wonderful crowd on a beautiful morning to have this fantastic conversation. Annie Rodenfels is a born competitor. We get into how she progressed from being a high school soccer player who ran track and field, to a top NCAA DIII runner, and then to one of ...
Apr 08, 2025•55 min
This episode features ultra trail runner and mom Mayra Garcia, who is originally from Honduras and now calls Maryland home. Garcia loves to run, and she loves to run very far: training for ultras is a big part of her life today. But not too long ago, Garcia wasn’t a runner at all. Not until one fateful day, when, instead of turning to coping with life's challenges in unhealthy ways, like using alcohol, Garcia decided to run. That run sparked a whole new life for Garcia. In this episode, Garcia t...
Apr 01, 2025•45 min
This episode features longtime professional runner, entrepreneur, mother of three, wife, and so much more, Stephanie Bruce. In this episode Bruce, who is 41, shares the purpose and passion that’s driving her these days, as she moves into a new chapter in her running career. It’s a time of transition and exciting new paths forward. As a professional runner in her early 40s, Bruce shares valuable experience and information about what it looks like to age as a elite athlete, and how she's processin...
Mar 25, 2025•43 min
This is part 9 of the Over 50, Sub 20, 5k Project, where WRS host and producer Cherie Louise Turner is sharing her journey to break 20 minutes in the 5k, in her 50s, in real time. Feel free to join the journey from here; it's not mandatory to listen to previous episodes in order to enjoy this one. Previous episodes will provide more context around this project and provide details about the many lessons Cherie has learned so far. This episode picks up where Cherie left off in late December 2024: ...
Mar 18, 2025•31 min
This is the transformative running story of Samantha Powderhorn, who is from the Sayisi Dene First Nations community, in northern Manitoba, Canada. She currently lives in Winnipeg. Powderhorn’s story revolves around breaking cycles of addiction and healing trauma, for herself, her family, and her community. Today Powederhorn is the first Sayisi Dene woman to have ever run a marathon. She is also an inspiration to her six children, and to her community, that healing and change are possible. Hear ...
Mar 11, 2025•36 min
Therese Munthe, 48, has always been athletic, and she's always been competitive. But she did not like to run. She believed she wasn't good at it—until she discovered marathoning, in her 40s. That all changed in 2021. Munthe was looking for a way to connect with her father when he was facing the end of his life. This led Munthe on a journey that has changed her life and turned her into a serious marathon runner. Just over the past few years Munthe has discovered that she actually is a good runner...
Mar 04, 2025•37 min
Molly Hurford knew she wanted to be a writer from a very young age. She also loved being active outdoors. But she had decided that, as a writer, she couldn’t possibly also be an athlete. That all changed in college. Today Hurford embodies many identities, including owner/founder of Strong Girl Publishing, writer, podcaster, and athlete, including being an ultra runner. This story is all about how Hurford developed into the athlete she is today, and how her combined passions of writing and sports...
Feb 25, 2025•34 min
Katie Gunvalson had a calling: traverse the entirety of the 2,700 mile Pacific Crest Trail. This audacious goal was something Gunvalson's younger self would have never considered. But, it's exactly what she did. The PCT, true to its name, follows the crest of the mountain ranges between Canada and Mexico, going through Washington, Oregon, and California, along the Cascade Range, the Sierra Nevada, and the mountainous desert terrain to the US–Mexico border. And not only did Katie want to get from...
Feb 18, 2025•51 min
This is a special live recording featuring 8x masters world record holder Sue McDonald, 61, in conversation with WRS host and producer Cherie; that's me. We sat down the Tracksmith track house in Boston on Sat., Feb 1, to a wonderful group who braved snowy weather for this terrific conversation. We get into how McDonald has stayed healthy and competitive over her 40-plus year career as a highly competitive athlete—in many sports. And how, at age 59, she looked over the record books and set to ra...
Feb 11, 2025•55 min
Jenny Sandoval is the 2022 NCAA DII 10,000 national champion, and now running as a post-collegiate elite/pro, she is focused on discovering her full potential in the sport. It's been a time of big ups and downs, as Sandoval navigates life as an elite runner, with a full time job. Her performance at the recent USATF cross country national championships, held on January 11 in Lubbock, Texas, was a high point, after a period of serious injury. Sandoval shares how it all went down at the national ch...
Feb 04, 2025•29 min
Weini Kelati is a professional road and long distance track racer for the Mission Run Dark Sky Distance team sponsored by Under Armour. Kelati is one of the best US racers in the 10k, 5k, and, more recently, half marathon. In this episode, Kelati shares how she got to this point in her running career, with a particular focus on the transformation her racing went through over the past year. This involves hard training, of course. But Kelati also had to improve her physical and mental skills when ...
Jan 28, 2025•49 min
Heather Caplan's running story spans many seasons of her life. And through those seasons, she has discovered how wins in her running life can show up in many different ways. Caplan is a runner, a run coach, a dietician, the mother of three children, and she is also well known for being the co-founder of the Lane 9 Project, with Alexis Fairbanks. To quote Caplan, "Lane 9 is a community of athletes and a directory of clinicians and coaches that work with female athletes. And we're all trying to im...
Jan 21, 2025•38 min
Today Chantelle Erickson is an ultra trail runner and, as she says, a multipreneur, in addition to being a wife and the mother of two children. Erickson runs her business Be Well Chantelle, and under the umbrella of that business, she has many offerings. One of them is Baby Mama, where she offers pre- and postnatal fitness services; she is a running coach. Additionally, Erickson is a financial advisor focused on helping women with financial literacy. She is also a freelance writer, and one of he...
Jan 14, 2025•35 min
Vanessa C. Peralta-Mitchell was inspired to start running after learning how hard women had fought to just participate in sports. That moment of inspiration would eventually change her life, setting Peralta-Mitchell on a path to change the running industry. How that all unfolded is what this episode is all about. Peralta-Mitchell is a runner, business owner, running coach, and mother of three children. She's well known for being the founder of Game Changers, an organization that supports women o...
Jan 07, 2025•54 min
For this episode, I chose a variety of clips from 10 episodes published in 2024 that have stuck with me and made an impact. This isn't a "best of" so much as a celebration of the huge variety of experiences and motivations women have in this sport. I hope you'll find something in here to motivate and inspire you, and perhaps spark a new interest for 2025. It's incredible how much this sport brings to so many people and the myriad ways it can show up in our lives. Enjoy! Clips were pulled from th...
Dec 31, 2024•21 min
This is part 8 of the Over 50, Sub 20, 5k Project, where WRS host and producer Cherie Louise Turner is sharing her journey to break 20 minutes in the 5k, in her 50s, in real time. Feel free to join the journey from here; it's not mandatory to listen to previous episodes in order to enjoy this one. Previous episodes will provide more context around this project and provide details about the many lessons Cherie has learned so far. This episode picks up where Cherie left off in early October: she'd...
Dec 24, 2024•31 min
Birdie Wermy had moments of connecting to running early in life. But it wasn't until she was an adult that her journey with the sport really got going. At that time, Birdie was going through some big life challenges, and a co-worker suggested she participate in a running event. That was where it all started. Birdie Wermy lives in Oregon but is originally from Oklahoma. She is the mother of two, and she is a native woman, of Southern Cheyenne, Kiowa, and Pawnee ancestry. As part of her running st...
Dec 17, 2024•36 min
