Nadia Ruiz was only 14 when she ran her first marathon. Since then she’s run 158 more (with 82 BQs), 136 half marathons, 13 half Ironmen, five full Ironmen, multiple ultras… Her parents are her inspiration to share her passion for health and education and to be a role model as a female, a Latina, and a child of immigrants.
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Nadia became aware of marathons as something that “regular people” could do when she learned that her middle school math/PE teacher was running one. Before that, she says, “I thought it was reserved for professional runners. So that’s kind of where the seed was planted. And then I was doing homework one night and I saw on TV the Ironman World Championship and I was like, ‘What is this? What is going on here?’ People are swimming and biking and running through from sunrise to sunset into the dark. And I was just entranced.
“I have complete respect for the professional runners and the elites out there, but my heart was touched by the people who are out there overcoming battles in their life. Overcoming divorce, overcoming loss, doing it for their children, doing it for whatever powerful reason that they created a goal for, and that touched my heart. I was only 12, 13 years old at the time, and I was like, ‘Wow, I cannot believe that human beings can do this, that they’re balancing family, life, work, and it seems like they’re doing it all.
“And so I was like, ‘One day I want to do an Ironman.’ I did the research, realized it was a very expensive sport. I come from an immigrant family. And then another thing was that there’s an age barrier; you had to be 18 to register for a full Ironman distance event. So I was like, ‘Okay, I’ll wait.’”
In the meantime, it seemed natural to her to sign up for one of the sports and start out that way. Thanks to her math teacher, the marathon seemed like the logical choice. It was her freshman year in high school, and she was running cross country. “I found that I had this endurance engine inside me and I was like, ‘Okay, I think it’s possible. If I can run three to five miles, why not run a marathon?’”
She registered for the Los Angeles Marathon, and then sat her parents down to tell them about it. “My mom was shocked. She’s just like, ‘What are you doing, mija?’ My dad was literally lost for words and he’s like, ‘I’m proud of you. You’re gonna do that; I’m gonna do it with you.’ So he ended up signing up and we both went.”
It was Nadia’s father who got her through the race. Around mile 11 or 12, she hit the wall. “I felt physically defeated and then I felt emotionally defeated. So I sat down on the curb crying, crying of embarrassment that I let myself down, that I feel like I let my dad down because he started this journey with me. And my dad just kneeled next to me. He’s like, ‘Mija, if you believe you can do it, then I believe you can do it. And we’re gonna do this together. So let’s do it one foot in front of the other. We put our mind to it and we can do anything.’ I was like, ‘Okay. So I’ve learned a lot of mental fortitude and a lot of mental strength from my dad. And we took one step after the other, still with the same amount of physical pain, but a different mindset at that point. You reshape what you’re thinking. You reshape the thoughts that are coming in and you start to allow that to propel you forward.
“When we crossed that finish line, I was 14 years old, my dad was 40. It was our first marathon we got to share together, step by step together. He grabbed my hand and waved it up high like we were the champions of the race. I mean, there are thousands and thousands of runners, but when you cross that finish line, it doesn’t matter. You share that moment and you feel like you won. You feel invincible.
“And the biggest thing that I try to tell my community and try to tell my athletes and even my students is when you cross that first finish line, whatever it is, a 5K, 10K, marathon, whatever it is, ultra, it’s that feeling of empowerment. It’s like, ‘I did this. I was able to show up for myself, push myself to arrive to the starting line, arrive to the finish line.’ And it’s just an overwhelming feeling that then translates to other areas of your life that you just want to keep going.”
After that, Nadia wanted to run more marathons, but on her high school coaches’ advice, she limited herself to one per year throughout high school and college. Then, as a grad student, she stopped. Her physical and mental health both suffered; she gained 40 pounds and developed an eating disorder.
In her senior year, she resolved to establish a healthy relationship with her body. “I re-shifted and changed a few things and I was able to lose 20, 25 pounds. I was never able to lose the rest, but that’s when I had a new woman’s body. So I was no longer in my teen body; I was now in my woman’s body. And that’s where I learned to be strong. I learned to embrace my woman’s body and say, ‘How strong can I be with this new frame?’ And that means embracing who I was, embracing what I felt, and sport helped me do that.”
The year after she finished grad school, she signed up for five marathons. The next year it was seven, then ten, and, as she says, “It just took off from there.”
Getting healthy was what initially motivated Nadia to start running again, but her parents were and continue to be her biggest inspiration. Both of her grandmothers passed away from Type 2 diabetes; both of her grandfathers passed away from prostate cancer and other ailments. “Once my grandparents were sick and then passing away, my parents thought, ‘That’s our future. That’s gonna be in our future and it’s gonna ail us.’ I was like, ‘No, it doesn’t have to be that way.’
“So I wanted to use my parents almost as a way to help transform their life and become healthier. My parents right now are in their mid-60s and they look like they’re in their late 40s, early 50s. They look so great for their age because they’re moving; they’re active. They have to work at it. People say it’s genetics, like you look young because of your genetics, or you’re athletic because of your genetics. I go, ‘No, I actually have to work really hard at it.’ But to me it’s important; it’s priority because if I can model this within myself, then I can help inspire my parents to continuously be healthy.
“Sometimes as we grow older and we see our parents age, they almost become our children. We look at them and we see them as our kids and we see their joy. It brings us joy. And so if I can see my dad happy running, it brings me so much happiness. If I can see my mom happy doing yoga and eating a wholesome meal and feeling great, it makes me happy. And so that’s where I talk about quality of life. It doesn’t have to be pursuing PRs. It doesn’t have to be going a hundred mile distance. It literally is the little things that we do every day that can give us a higher quality of life.”
Nadia’s parents also motivated her to serve as a role model. “When I was a child growing up, the biggest message that my parents, primarily my dad, said was, ‘The more you invest in your education, the more opportunities you’re going to grow for yourself.’ Like, you’re not coming from the same position as everybody else, but that doesn’t matter. You start where you are; you work hard where you are; you recognize where you’re coming from in order to know where you’re going to go and keep working hard at it.
“So this was a message that my dad instilled in me from early on and I saw it in both my parents. Their work ethic as immigrants, as parents, they worked hard. They would balance between two to three jobs and work around the clock to put food on the table. That’s kind of why I always want to be a role model because you can’t teach motivation; you can inspire it. If you are doing it and you are living proof of it, then you can help empower somebody else to think, ‘Maybe I can do it too.’”
Whenever she finds herself in a challenging situation, she hears her dad’s voice in her mind. “Doesn’t matter where you’re starting. You just keep working hard. You keep investing in yourself and create opportunities and represent. Represent for you. Represent for the family and represent for our culture. Remember where you’re coming from.”
“That was always the message that I wanted to share with others is that you can get here too. That it is within you, regardless of wherever you’re starting. When you’re a woman or when you’re Latino or when you’re a minority, don’t see it as a limitation; see it as a form of a challenge, maybe, like, ‘I can do it too.’”
Resources:
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