What Makes You a Real Runner? The Truth About Belonging, Identity, and Who Gets to Decide

Have you ever wondered if you’re a real runner?
If you’ve ever felt too slow, too old, too new, too inconsistent, too imperfect to claim the title… this episode is for you.

This week, Stacy Cacciatore — founder of Mile Marker Matriarch and creator of the Running Rhetorics framework — breaks open one of the most toxic myths in running culture: the belief that only a certain kind of runner “counts.”

The spark? A shocking story from the Disney Princess Half Marathon, where a male runner bragged about racking up “kills” by passing slower women. Elitism. Ego. Entitlement. And the ripple effects that say you don’t belong here.

But this episode isn’t just about running.
It’s about identity, agency, and who gets permission to take up space — on the course and in your life.

Stacy shares:

✨ The hidden history of women being pushed out of the sport
✨ Why the “real runner” myth still harms women today
✨ The moment she witnessed a grandmother runner get knocked down — literally — by someone who thought he deserved the road more
✨ How running mirrors society’s power structures
✨ And the radical reframe every woman needs to hear:

If you run, you are a real runner.

Whether you’re running loops during your kid’s soccer practice, building miles at 4 a.m., training through fear, grief, or self-doubt, or standing in the back corral wondering if you belong — this episode will meet you where you are.

You’ll walk away with:

💛 A mantra to carry on your next run
💛 A mindset shift to silence your inner critic
💛 A call to build a running community grounded in belonging, not competition
💛 And a reminder you may not hear enough:

You deserve to take up space. On the course. And in your life.

If this episode makes you feel seen, send it to a woman who needs that same reminder.
Let’s redefine what a real runner looks like — together.

Let's connect!

Instagram: @milemarkermatriarch

TikTok: @milemarkermatriarch

YouTube: @stacycacciatore

Lemon8: @milemarkermatriarch

https://milemarkermatriarchpodcast.com

Email the show at milemarkermatriarch@gmail.com

Transcript

MMM-Who Gets to Call Themselves a Real Runner? (And Why the Answer Matters for Every Woman Finding Her Power)

[00:00:00] Hey, it's your running buddy, Stacy, and welcome to the Mile Marker Matriarch podcast. The running podcast we run for purpose, not pace. I'm a mom runner scholar, or RCA running coach, NSM certified personal trainer and nutrition coach. And I am here to help you reclaim your power, find your purpose, and live a meaningful life one mile at a time.

Before we start, I wanna say this. If you press play on this specific episode, you're here for a reason and I know something about you already. You wanna feel seen in your running journey. You wanna feel like you belong, like you're enough, like the miles that you run matter. And they do. And this conversation is for you.

Because I think at some point you have felt the sting of not feeling like a real runner. And today we're gonna talk about why that feeling exists and why [00:01:00] it's time for it to end. I'm gonna share a story with you today, and this story shook something in me. It's small on the surface, but the truth, it reveals something deep.

A male runner posted on the dis boards asking if anyone wanted to join him in the dead last start. Challenge and compete for kills at the Disney Princess half marathon. The dead last start is an informal challenge created by a few elitist runners who start the race at the very last corral and try to pass as many runners as possible. They call it the slower runner's kills. Now, when someone needs to inflate their ego that large, I can't help but wonder what tiny, fragile part of themselves they're trying to cover. But this wasn't just one guy on a forum. This is a crack in the surface of something I've been seeing and feeling for years, and I am completely fed up with the elitist behavior in running, and it is time for it to stop.

And even more broadly, I'm tired of running against the headwinds of power. The people who try to push out those who [00:02:00] they decided don't belong. Because this isn't just about running, it's about every place in life where women are still told that we don't qualify, that we're too slow, we're too old, we're too fat, we're not fast enough, not strong enough, not serious enough, not a real runner.

I love Disney races and the Run Disney community even more. I've run 21 run Disney races 

From the dopey and the goofy challenge to the castle to Chateau, a Dream race in Disneyland, Paris to the Disney Princess Half Marathon that I run every year on my birthday. 

I've been fully immersed in the Disney culture for at least the past 12 years. 91 to 95% of the runners in the Disney Princess have marathon are women. And for those women, over 50% of them are running their very first half marathon. This close knit matriarchy of women runners really shapes the run Disney community's identity.

Seasoned runners welcome the new, folding them under their wing [00:03:00] and helping them navigate all the little nuances of running a Disney race. The matriarchal run Disney community is filled with such positivity. Women are sharing their successes, like wording, their first 10 miler, sharing their struggles, like a tough run or a missed milestone.

Sharing their fears, like the fears of the balloon, ladies, a PACE requirements or not being able to finish. Okay, women bond over the shared lived experience of completing this physical feat. And over the years I've been inspired by the successes, watching the pure elation of women running the longest distance that she's ever run in her life, a distance she never imagined she could do.

My heart has also broken for the women who have suffered an injury after months of training and had to watch their dream fade right in front of 'em. I've heard the stories of women running for someone or something outside of themselves for a loved one with cancer, to raise money for a children's [00:04:00] hospital or in memory of a parent who passed away.

And I've related to the shared fears, oh, those balloon ladies. The pace requirements, the fear being swept, we all are in this lived experience together. And by the time you're standing shoulder to shoulder with these women shivering in the corral and that rare, chilly air that sweeps over Lakewood a vista in the early February mornings, you feel like you know each other deeply and you may not know the name of the woman whose Tinkerbell two.

Two is shutting glitter all over you while you're waiting for the corrals fireworks to start, but you still feel like you do because you knew something even more intimate. You know that she carved time out of her busy schedule. Before taking her kids to school during her lunch break or at night, and the treadmill in her basement and the tiny slivers of time between everything else she asked to do, she made sacrifices to stand at that starting line.

And there's an inherent respect [00:05:00] across that sea of women dancing in place. Partly because the music is blasting so loud, you can feel it through your shoes, and partly because your nerves are so real. In that moment, you can hear Carissa Galloway hyping the crowd before the corral star, and you cannot wait to hear those fireworks go off. So to hear a woman being called a kill and being reduced to that by a fellow male runner, it personally hurts my heart. The problem isn't only the concept that killing slower runners is disheartening and dehumanizing. It's not only that the terminology kills jarring is that these actions are demonstrative of violent disrespect towards the back of the packers.

And I need to tell you something else that I witnessed during the same race that I'll never forget. We were less than a mile into the half marathon when I saw a man aggressively pass an older woman. He ran up on top of the median and his footing slipped and he bumped into her so hard that she felt right to the ground road rash to her entire right side, [00:06:00] and her right temple began to bleed from where it hit the pavement.

He kept running seemingly oblivious to the chaos he caused. The medics rushed over to her and brought her to the medical tent and strongly discouraged her from continuing the race because of her head injury. This grandmother, this grandmother, who had dreamed of running a half marathon, but believed she never could, she had committed to pushing her body to limit.

She never imagined possible after hundreds of hours of training, thousands of dollars spent, and all the sacrifices she made to tow that start line. She was knocked off the race because of someone else's selfish, egotistical, elitist behavior. It wasn't simply an accident. This was the result of someone believing they had more of a right to take up space than anyone else that they deserved to be there, and she didn't.

Everything shifted for me in this moment. I had told myself that elitism and sexism and running were things of the past. I suppose I thought this because it's been 58 [00:07:00] years since Jock Simple. The co-director of the Boston Marathon tried to physically push Katherine Switzer off the course and rip off her bib number simply because she was a woman.

And it wasn't until 19 72, 5 years after that moment that the Amateur Athletic Union finally changed the rules and women were allowed to legally run marathons in the United States. And then it hit me. Here we were 58 years later, still being pushed off the course. Different man, different marathon, same message.

And I realized I had mistaken representation for acceptance. I had assumed that once women were allowed to run, that the sexism and elitism baked to the sports somehow vanished. It didn't. And the problem is that Running Mirror Society, the same dynamics that show up in running, they're shaping the rest of the world.

Who is centered? Who is celebrated? Who is allowed to belong, and who's allowed to show up on the course? You see it in the headlines. And who [00:08:00] gets ignored after the Chicago Marathon? The majority of the headlines focused on the elites. But what about the rest of the playing field? You see, women had to fight to be allowed just to show up.

And even now, our worth is still measured up against standards that were never built. For us, running looks like freedom, but it carries the same old hierarchies, the same invisible rules, and the same systems of power. And unless we name that, we end up mistaking access for equality, participation for belonging.

A representation for acceptance. And just like in society, the people who do the most work, who carry the most weight and who show the most grit are the people less recognized that back of the packer who's just a kill to a faster runner. But that kill, she's the one up at 4:00 AM ready before work. She's the six plus hour marathoner who ran hundreds of hours of her neighborhood just to be here today.

She's the one who raised thousands of dollars for charity while [00:09:00] pounding the pavement. She's the one who reclaimed her health through running. She's your neighbor. She's your friend, she's your coworker. Maybe she's you, and if she's you and you're her, let me tell you directly, you are a real runner. A real runner isn't the fastest runner.

Speed, age, and number of races run aren't inputs. It's a magic formula that computes the definition of a real runner. A real runner is the person who shows up. The one who laces up when they'd rather stay in bed. The one who knows she's gonna be on the road beyond the time her body wants to give up, but she doesn't.

The one who decides that they are worth it, that they're worth showing up for, that they're worth lacing up for, and that they deserve to take up space on the race course and in the world. And let me say it again. For those of us in the back of the pack, if you run, you are a real runner. Do not let anyone tell you [00:10:00] otherwise.

If you're out there running laps around the soccer field during your kids' practice, because that's all the time you have, you're a real runner. If you'll never qualify for Boston, you're a real runner. If you hate running in the moment, but you know you'll feel better afterwards. You're a real runner if you dread going out for that run, but you do it anyways.

You're a real runner if you've run on the tread or around your house or back and forth, up and down your driveway, because that's the only space you have. You're a real runner. And if you've run in the back of the pack and the dark and the margins of your own life, you're a real runner and you deserve to be recognized.

I have a challenge for you. During your next run, I want you to repeat this mantra. I deserve to take up space. The next time you give yourself a hard time about your pace, stop and say, I am running my pace. No one else's. And if you start to fall into that trap of thinking you're not a real runner, [00:11:00] tell yourself I run.

Therefore, I'm a real runner. But I want you to go beyond saying it to yourself. I want you to show up for other women who are out there in the back of the pack. Cheer for them. Support them. Post your slowest time, not your fastest ajo, the movement. Join hashtag running for purpose, not pace. And I wanna see those posts out there on Instagram and TikTok.

Because we are a strong community of women runners, we can build our own running matriarchy, one that lifts each other's up. It does not tear each other down. We have the power to reframe running rhetorics. We have the agency to push for a more inclusive running environment, a running community that celebrates the people who show up.

That cheers just as loudly for those in the back as those in the front that honors women brave enough to lease up for the very first time. A community that celebrates every single person who crosses that finish line long after the confetti has been swept away. [00:12:00] And even if you are the last one across that finish line, you are not alone because we are all standing here beside you, cheering you on, believing in you, and reminding you that you are a real runner.

I hope this episode resonated with you, and if it did, send it to a woman that you care about, because if this made a difference in your life, you can make a difference in someone else's. And I wanna remind you, you belong on the road, on the trail, and your body, and in your life, and I believe in you. Keep showing up, keep being you, and keep repeating it until we make a change where every woman and every runner believes in it too.

If no one else tells you today, I wanna tell you as your running buddy, friend and coach, I am proud of you. I am proud of you for showing up today, and I am proud of you for dedicating time to your health and I believe in you. I know you have what it takes to be your best and most authentic self. [00:13:00] I know that you have the power to bring meaning to your miles, and I am here by your side with every stride you take, cheering you on, clapping for you, building you up.

Now go kick ass on your run.