Brittany Lewis

Name: Brittany Lewis

Current Location: New York City, NY

I stumbled across TMIRCE last summer after receiving a Meetup email that advertised a track workout that would be followed by a pizza delivery. I hadn’t been to a track since my freshman year of high school, where I ran the 600m and finished last in every race. But I am a professional student and will do just about anything for free/cheap pizza. I don’t remember the workout at all, but the food was good and I figured I should just keep coming back. (We haven’t done the pizza thing since, hint hint…)

High school track stardom notwithstanding, I pursued no athletic endeavors during and after college, and last summer I still considered myself a recent convert to running. Changing my lifestyle came about because of a variety of factors, but one of the most important influences is my mother. She suffers from a disease called rheumatoid arthritis, which prevents her from doing any repetitive activity like walking beyond about a half mile. It’s been rough on both her physical and mental health, but she still makes an effort to enjoy being active as much as her body allows. It seemed wasteful for me, a completely healthy person, to be ignoring my good fortune by sitting at a desk all day. Long story short – I got hooked on running rather quickly and started testing out some of the local workout groups in the city. When I showed up at TMIRCE I knew that these were people who shared my newly discovered enthusiasm.

Running for me isn’t about competing against others or about PR’ing at every race. It’s about enjoying being active, exploring our city/country/world by foot, and sharing unique experiences with like-minded people. Running is a privilege that I hope to never take for granted. Running for high fives and positive attitudes and sweat and beer and brunch (plus so much more!) is why I’ll keep coming back to TMIRCE every week.