Senior Stories: Vianey, Overcoming Obstacles
Vianey with her SRLA team.
Vianey is a SRLA and Honda Power of Dreams Scholarship recipient. She recently graduated from Verdugo Hills High School. She started running with SRLA in 8th grade and has run with us for 4 years. Vianey has completed 4 marathons and ran her personal best this year with a time of 4 hours 21 min and 5 seconds. She will be attending UC Riverside in the Fall!
From the ages of 5 to 15 I lived in Tujunga, California, located in the valley. I attended Mount Gleason middle school where I first started running with SRLA. As soon as I started running with the team I fell in love with the running and the team as well. I started attending Verdugo Hills High School and continued my running journey with the Verdugo team. Which has by far been the best team and like a true family. While running on the Verdugo team the most important thing I learned from my coaches was to listen to my body and myself. Along with learning that a very important part of running is my mental health. It is always best to listen to my body before a run. If my mind is not in the run it won’t be a good run.
“The most important thing I learned from my coaches was to listen to my body and myself.”
Vianey at graduation, she will attend UC Riverside!
Towards the end of my freshman year, I got the news that my family got a better opportunity to live out in Rialto in the San Bernardino County. What seemed like a brand new start quickly came to an end two months later when we had to move again, to Bloomington, CA. I lived in Bloomington from September 2018 to December 2019. In my sophomore year, I moved schools twice. This was very hard for me. I felt very alone and I didn’t know who to go to. I was still running for SRLA during my sophomore year but training on my own and only attending the official races. I noticed that it was very hard when things around me were not going well, especially because I felt very alone not having my team being they were over an hour away. I also felt that running turned into a mandatory thing rather than something I enjoyed doing.
Overall my sophomore year was very bad, after having run my third marathon in 2019 during the summer I really contemplated running for my junior year. After viewing my pros and cons and seeing that I was not in the best place mentally I sadly took a year off from running, This also gave me a great opportunity to focus a little more on school. I thank SRLA and my amazing coaches to give me the courage to put my mental health first and take a break from something I loved doing. SRLA as well taught me to challenge myself, that being said I agreed and started running again. The moment I finished the challenge I knew I was going to start running again. SRLA did not only teach me one thing but multiple that I will carry through life as well as providing me with a community I could count on.
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