Health & Wellness

Colorado Health & Wellness | 2015 Summer & Fall Edition

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Health and Wellness Magazine • 37 Cortese had plenty of reasons to say no. She'd gone 17 years without running due to knee pain that ultimately required surgery. She'd picked it back up again recently, but wasn't fast or competitive. She'd just started a new job and was barely running 20 miles a week. She could, quite possibly, be the slowest runner in the group. And, well, it sounded "really, really hard," she recalls. She signed up anyway. "In the past, I had confused being THE best with being MY best and walked away from opportunities when I didn't think I could be THE best. As a result, I missed out on some things," recalls Cortese, a 51-year- old marketing executive from Denver. "I decided I was at a point in my life when I was no longer going to be deterred by the idea of something being too hard." On Feb. 7, Cortese boarded a 787 Dreamliner for a 16-hour flight to Melbourne, Australia, where she would meet 34 other runners (many of them veteran marathoners) for the inaugural Triple 7 Quest. The adventure race takes runners, who pay about $14,000 each, to Melbourne; Abu Dhabi, UAE; Paris, France; Tunis, Tunisia; Long Island, New York; Punta Arenas, Chile; and King George Island, Antarctica, to run certified half-marathon or marathon courses. Cortese ran for Girls on the Run, a nonprofit youth development program that uses non-competitive running as a tool to empower girls in third through eighth grades. Karen Cortese poses with her mother, Ruth Cortese, 74, and her sister Marie Whisenant at the finish of the Great Wall of China Half Marathon. Small Personabl Perfect

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