Why This Nurse Runs | Nurse.org

On January 1st, 2018, I took the first step to a healthier me and decided that my New Year’s resolution would be to start running. Living across from a park with a 3.36-mile running lane made it easy to access a path, but getting up and out of the house was an arduous task initially. At the time, I was about two years into my nursing career, working at an extremely busy emergency department in Washington Heights, NYC. I still remember how quiet the park was those first mornings, frozen ground, bare trees, my own breath the loudest thing I could hear.

Although the environment I worked in was intense and often exhausting, it was still my happy place. Work was where I felt valued and where I gained my ability to eventually become self-sufficient. When I arrived home, I had my two wonderful sons, whom I worked so hard to support, and who gave me all the joy this world has to offer. However, I was also enduring a challenging separation that felt depleting in so many ways.

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Amidst all this, I knew I had to do more to care for myself, and running seemed most feasible. After all, I just needed a good pair of sneakers and a strong sports bra, right? Wrong! At first came the excuse of needing to “find” the energy to run, until I realized that energy was a product of having gone for a run; it was not a precursor. Resting and relaxing alone often left me feeling guilty, somehow, as though I should have used my time more productively. Running offered me a fortress of solitude where I could either clear my mind or think through what was bothering me while burning a sweat.

Call it kismet, but I had soon learned at a work meeting about Provision 5 from the ANA Code of Ethics, and it hit me like a spiritual revelation. I understood from Provision 5 that I owed myself the same care I so diligently invested in and afforded to others. Seems simple, and I’d love to say that I knew that deep down, but I truly think I had unlearned it. After enduring years of self-doubt, mostly fueled by outside influences, I had to re-learn my self-worth. I decided that running was the “me-time” I needed for self-rediscovery, and no excuse was going to rob me of that outlet any longer. What started as a resolution became something much more personal: a way to keep a promise to myself.

By March 2018 I ran my first 5K at the Coogan’s Salsa, Blues and Shamrocks 5K in Washington Heights, and in May I ran with my local Brooklyn PTA. I kept running recreationally, and in 2020 I developed a running group in the Emergency Department where I was a leader. It wasn’t just an activity I could do for myself; it was something I could use to connect with and support other people. Our story was later shared by NYCRUNS, and in 2022 I ran the NYCRUNS Brooklyn Half Marathon, the first of two years running it.

Running with a group for the first time taught me a great deal about leadership. No one finishes a run alone, and no one finishes a shift alone either. It taught me about meeting others where they are: slowing down when needed to support those who are joining the mission and just need that extra push to start, and speeding up when you want to stop, so that you’re not left behind even though all you’d like to do is stay at a pace you’re comfortable with. Running together helped us de-stress as a team outside of the ED, where we battled COVID-19 for our patients every day. That lesson stayed with me and brought life to the African proverb “If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.”

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Around that same time, my two sons also started to join me on my runs. At first they rode their scooters, weaving circles around me and stopping every few hundred feet to wait, which did absolutely nothing for my pace and everything for my mood. Eventually, in 2022, they started running beside me, slowly working up to completing the whole path. We still go for runs to this day, and it’s been an amazing bonding experience. They have never known a version of their mother who does not run, and I think about that more than I expected to. They have seen me make time for myself, set a goal, struggle, keep going, and show up again. In some ways, that may be the most meaningful thing running has given me.

Fast forward a few years and a few other running events, and this November 1st I am going to run the TCS NYC Marathon, a full 26.2 miles, on the 50th anniversary of the year the race first crossed all five boroughs. For me that is just under eight laps of the same Brooklyn park where I started, except this time it ends in Central Park. I am running with a charity bib for Futures and Options, a nonprofit that has connected New York City high school students with paid, mentored internships and career-readiness training since 1995.

Training for this while running an emergency department has not been convenient. My long runs happen before the city wakes up, because that is the only block of time nobody else has a claim on. I have run after night shifts and on days I did not want to move at all. I have learned that consistency does not mean doing everything perfectly. Sometimes it just means showing up in whatever way you can. I am telling you that part on purpose: I am not an elite runner, I did not come to this young, and I have a full life that does not pause for a training plan.

As I prepare for November 1st, I think about how it all started, and how, as a nurse, running has allowed me to live out Provision 5 of the newly revised 2025 ANA Code of Ethics: “The nurse has moral duties to self as a person of inherent dignity and worth…” We are good at extending dignity to our patients. We are much worse at extending it to ourselves. Running is how I practice it. It started on a cold morning, badly, with no idea where it was going.

If I can get to the start line, so can you. And your start line doesn’t have to be 26.2 miles away. Maybe it’s just one block. Start there. I’ll report back from the finish line.

Soorma is running the 2026 TCS NYC Marathon in support of Futures and Options, a New York City youth internship nonprofit. Her fundraising page is here.

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