“To prove that I was out here,” she explains. Every run, every race, every traverse of a mountain trail, every gym workout, Valerio begins by taking a photo.
Valerio blasts him with a big smile and a “Good afternoon, sir!”Īnd then, turning, she extends her arm for a ritual selfie. He looks at Valerio-a 39-year-old, 5-foot-7, 250-pound African-American dressed in a ball cap, fitness top, knee-length running tights, and training shoes-and does a cartoon-grade double take. Valerio’s voice-bright, plangent, and Juilliard-trained-rouses a middle-aged man who’s been dozing on a sunny bench on the fishing deck. “But you know what bothers me the most? People look at me and think, Big as this girl is, how can she possibly enjoy her sport? She says she loves to run, but she’s really just punishing herself.” Moving toward the fishing platform where she always begins her Black Rock runs, Valerio pulls out her smartphone. “Or people think, She claims to follow a healthy diet, but I bet she goes home every night and eats a gallon of ice cream.” She’s about to start her second run of the day. The serviceberry trees are budding on the hogback hills, but the oak trees and other hardwoods remain bare.Įarly that morning, before dawn, Valerio had led a three-mile group run around the campus of Rabun Gap-Na-coochee School in the nearby town of Rabun Gap, where she serves as Spanish teacher, choir director, and head coach of the cross-country team. It’s a shining afternoon in early April in the high country of northeastern Georgia, along the eastern reach of the Appalachian Mountains. Mirna Valerio climbs out of her car at Black Rock Lake. “PEOPLE ALWAYS SAY TO ME, ‘Anyone who runs as much as you do deserves to be skinny.’ Of course, what they’re really saying: ‘If you do all this running, why are you still so fat?’ ” Mirna Valerio in Black Rock Mountain State Park in Mountain City, Georgia, for an early morning trail run.
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