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