Running Together, Even When the Miles Are Their Own

For Brian and Amy Contreras, running is very much a family affair.

They trained for the Sydney Marathon together. Brian was Amy’s running coach. Amy described herself as Brian’s “hype woman.” Their seven-year-old daughter has grown up around the sport so much that she assumes running marathons is simply a thing adults do.

“Our kid thinks it’s so normal to run marathons,” Amy laughed.

What she doesn’t know yet is that her parents’ paths to the marathon starting line have looked pretty different. Brian has years of running experience and a personal connection between running and his mental health. Amy didn’t really consider herself a runner until a couple of years ago.

In August, those paths brought them both to Australia, where they took on one of the biggest races in the world together, representing Team Still I Run and a mission that means something deeply personal to both of them.

Brian’s Connection to Still I Run Started in Honolulu

Sydney wasn’t Brian’s first race with Team Still I Run. That story goes back to 2023, when he joined the team for the Honolulu Marathon as a Bring Your Own Bib ("BYOB") runner.

Brian had experienced mental health struggles throughout high school and college, and as an adult, running became an important part of how he cares for his mental health. It gives him space to quiet his mind, but just as importantly, it has connected him with a community of people who support one another.

Living in Chicago certainly helps. The city has a huge running community, and Brian has found camaraderie and friendships through the sport. Still I Run felt like a natural extension of something he had already experienced firsthand: running can support your mental well-being, and the people you meet along the way can matter just as much as the miles.

Honolulu made that connection even stronger. Brian met Still I Run Executive Director Sasha Wolff and her husband, Greg, and quickly connected with them and the rest of the team.

“It was an awesome experience with the team out there,” he said.

And apparently, once Brian joins a team, he has a tendency to keep showing up.

When Team Still I Run headed to the Los Angeles Marathon, Brian essentially crashed the party, joining the group and meeting Team Still I Run Race Manager Allie Pendleton. His relationship with the organization kept growing, even when he wasn’t officially racing on the team.

That connection would eventually help bring Amy to Team Still I Run, too.

Amy’s Running Story Had a Few False Starts

Amy’s path to Sydney was a little different.

She started trying to run in 2021, during the COVID years, when getting outside and out of the house sounded especially appealing. There was just one problem: she had no idea what she was doing.

She got hurt almost immediately.

What followed were several years of physical therapy, which meant the running journey she thought she was beginning had to be put on hold. It wasn’t until 2024, after finishing physical therapy, that Amy felt like her running journey really began.

Since then, she’s mostly gravitated toward half marathons. She had completed one marathon, but she was pretty convinced that would be it.

“I always said I’d be a one and done,” she said.

Sydney had other plans.

Brian earned his entry into the Sydney Marathon through the lottery, and the original plan was for Amy to travel with him and cheer him on. Once they decided their daughter wouldn’t be making the trip, another possibility started to take shape.

What if Amy ran it, too?

The lottery was already closed, so she knew she would need to find a charity bib. That made the organization she chose especially important.

“Asking friends, family and strangers for money is a new thing for me, so I really wanted to feel passionately about the charity that I chose,” Amy said.

She didn’t have to look very far.

A Mission That Was Already Personal

Amy had gotten to know Still I Run when Brian ran Honolulu, and the mission had resonated with her from the beginning.

She and Brian have been together since college. She saw his mental health struggles firsthand, and she also saw what happened when running became part of his life.

For Brian, she said, running and the community surrounding it have been a “life-saving device.”

Amy has also had family members who have struggled with their mental health, and she has lost people in her life to suicide. While she feels fortunate that she hasn’t experienced significant mental health struggles herself, she knows what it’s like to love people who have.

“I love the concept of Still I Run,” she said.

Still I Run’s mission centers on making every step a stride toward improved mental health and well-being, with movement, mental health, and community intentionally connected. For Amy, that connection between movement and mental health wasn’t an abstract idea. She had already watched it play out in her own family.

Brian connected her with Allie, and when they learned Team Still I Run still had Sydney bibs available, the timing felt almost too perfect.

Amy had already registered for a different fall marathon, but a family commitment meant she was going to have to back out of that race. Sydney gave her an unexpected second chance to run a marathon that year, only now she would get to do it alongside Brian and for an organization their family already cared about.

The stars, as Amy put it, kind of aligned.

Training as a Team—Sort Of

Having two marathoners in one household sounds great until you remember there is also a seven-year-old living there.

Amy and Brian trained together when they could, but most of their training required a divide-and-conquer approach. Someone needed to be with their daughter, which meant coordinating long runs, workouts and the rest of family life around two training schedules.

Every once in a while, though, the miles lined up.

They sometimes got to join a local running group together on Fridays, and occasionally their daughter came along on her bike or scooter. Running became part of the rhythm of their family life rather than something Mom and Dad disappeared to do.

Brian also served as Amy’s running coach, which was perhaps a brave marital decision considering his own training schedule.

Sydney wasn’t his only race on the calendar. He’s also preparing to run the Chicago Marathon and then a 100-mile ultramarathon in Illinois.

“He’s my run coach, but I’m his hype woman,” Amy said.

It seems like a fair division of labor.

Taking on Sydney

When race day finally arrived, Brian and Amy may have traveled to Sydney together, but each had their own 26.2-mile journey ahead.

For Amy, Sydney was her first Abbott World Marathon Major, her second marathon and her first time taking on the full distance completely on her own. Before the race, that last part was what excited her most.

“I’m really excited about taking on this challenge,” she said.

After an early running journey that involved injury, years of physical therapy and a restart, simply making it to the starting line of a major marathon represented how far Amy’s running story had come. Then she got to take on every mile herself, surrounded by the energy of Sydney and thousands of other runners doing the same.

For Brian, Sydney marked his first World Marathon Major outside of Chicago. But even before race day, part of what he was looking forward to most was watching Amy experience it.

He loves the unique atmosphere of a major marathon and the way thousands of strangers can become completely invested in one another’s success for a few hours.

“It’s the one sport out there that’s competitive, yes, but nobody in the crowd is cheering for someone to lose,” Brian said. “Everyone in the crowd wants every single person out there, from the winner to the very last finisher, to succeed.”

That sense of community followed them all the way from Chicago to Australia. Brian was part of a WhatsApp group with about 35 runners from Chicago traveling to Sydney for the marathon. Add in the Team Still I Run runners who made the trip, and a race thousands of miles from home still came with plenty of familiar faces.

For an organization that sees belonging and shared movement as central to its work, it was a fitting example of what Team Still I Run can create. Team Still I Run is designed to turn endurance events into opportunities for advocacy, fundraising and deeper connection to the mission.

Brian and Amy each had their own race to run, their own miles to cover and their own reasons for being there. But they got to share the experience of reaching Sydney together.

The Next Generation of Marathoners?

There’s one person in the Contreras family who might be the least impressed by all of this.

Their daughter is seven. She has two parents who plan weekends around long runs, talk about marathon training at home and casually travel to other countries to run 26.2 miles.

As far as she knows, this is just what parents do.

“She thinks everyone runs marathons like Mom and Dad do,” Amy said.

That’s especially funny to Amy, who never imagined she would become a mom who runs marathons. She wasn’t a lifelong runner. Her first attempt at the sport ended in an injury. Even after she finally made it to her first marathon, she was sure she’d only do one.

Then she went to Sydney and did it again.

Brian was there, too, adding another Team Still I Run race to a journey that began in Honolulu three years ago. This time, the person joining the team alongside him was the person who has seen his entire mental health journey, watched running become an important part of his life and cheered him through countless miles.

They each had their own 26.2 miles to run in Sydney, but getting there was something they did together.

And somewhere back home, there was a seven-year-old who still thought the whole thing was completely normal.