Ashley never considered herself a runner. As a kid she dabbled in sports, hated cross country, and didn't think twice about it. It wasn't until her early thirties, going through a divorce and looking for somewhere to put all that energy, that she laced up a pair of $10 Walmart shoes and headed out onto the country roads behind her house with nothing but cheap earbuds and an Eminem playlist. She had no plan, no training knowledge, and no idea what was coming.

Fast forward a few years and Ashley, a 911 dispatcher who has spent nearly two decades taking calls from the streets of Austin, decided on a whim one late summer night to sign up for the Austin Marathon and run the very roads she's been protecting for her entire career. She built her own training plan from scratch to fit her rotating shift schedule, tackled the heat and humidity of a Texas summer, and showed up to the start line ready to prove something to herself that had been a long time coming.

Follow along with Ashley: @ashleybblank

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