"It Will Be a Story": An Achilles Athlete on Her Journey to the Virtual TCS New York City Marathon
Julia Beckley (pictured above, far left) had never run a race until a year ago, when she lined up in a borrowed pushrim wheelchair to do her first 5K. This summer, she is training to run the NYRR Virtual TCS New York City Marathon as an Achilles support runner with her partner, Bennie (pictured above in the gray jacket).
Beckley, 26, who lives in Fort Collins, CO, has a medical condition that results in brittle bones. Between 2018 and 2019, she spent over 100 days in hospitals, “and that’s been a theme for the last 10 years,” she said. Since she began racing regularly over the last year, Beckley has only spent 10 days in the hospital, something she attributes to her love of racing and to the camaraderie she has found in her running group, the Denver chapter of Achilles International. It makes her feel, she said, like she’s no longer “alone in the fight.”
In January 2019, Beckley was working and attending college classes, “juggling 100 different things,” she said. Her health was precarious. A friend encouraged her to try wheelchair racing, but Beckley ended up in the hospital again before she even made it to the start line of what was to be her first race, at Disney World in Orlando, FL.
“That experience lit a fire in me,” Beckley said. “How do I get where I want to be?”
She called five different organizations before finding one that had available racing chairs. She had planned to look for a handcycle, but her physical therapist had her try sitting in a pushrim, and she was sold.
A month or so later, she completed three laps on a track in the borrowed chair, which did not fit her properly. She was still plagued by medical issues but was undeterred. “This is hard, I love it, I want to do it,” she remembered thinking.
Beckley loved the experience of her first 5K, despite being so sore the next day she could barely move her arms. She was supposed to do a 10K next, but at the last minute was told the course could not accommodate her chair. She did the distance on her own, stubbornly, and immediately thought, “OK, what’s next?”
Beckley signed up for a 15K, then a half. By then she was driving an hour each way to work out with the Denver Achilles group every Monday night, and meeting a tight group of friends (the picture below shows Beckley on a 10-mile training run). She came out to some of her running friends, which gave her the confidence, she said, to come out to her other friends and to her family.
In December, Beckley and a friend decided to do the Las Vegas Half. She blew her wheelchair’s front tire the week before during a workout, and the company then overnighted her the wrong tire. Through the Achilles group, she discovered that someone had a spare tire that fit her chair and told her to take it. “He saved my trip,” she said. “It was the time of my life.” She set a PR for the half and met one of her wheelchair racing heroes, Ryen Reed, an aspiring Paralympian (pictured below, left, with Beckley, right).
In January, pre-pandemic, Beckley completed the Rock ‘n’ Roll Arizona Marathon, her first full. She knew then she wanted to do another marathon, and with the encouragement of her Achilles teammates, many of whom were New York veterans, signed up for the TCS New York City Marathon in February.
By then she ran regularly with Bennie, who is developmentally delayed and runs with a support runner who helps him make decisions along his way. Bennie loves to travel, said Beckley, and asked frequently about going to New York.
Then the pandemic hit. “I kept telling Bennie New York would happen,” Beckley said, even though she said she did not think it would. When the in-person marathon was canceled, she was not surprised. And she saw an opportunity: Though she and Bennie could not have run side-by-side in New York, where Beckley would have started in the women's wheelchair division, they could on a virtual course. She immediately decided to focus on giving Bernie an amazing virtual marathon experience. She posted on Facebook running groups asking for suggestions from people who had completed virtual marathons, about how they made them special. Others suggested signs, video support messages, mile markers and a finish line. Someone created a logo for the duo, and Beckley will have T-shirts made. November 15 is their target race date.
Beckley went into the hospital in mid-July for shoulder surgery, but was already optimistic that night after the procedure about her recovery and the training process, which she will do under the guidance of a physical therapist once she rehabs her shoulder. “Whatever I do, it will be a story and it will be fun,” she said confidently.