Stories And Inspiration

When Caroline Murray joined the Kitty Hawk Elementary GO FAR club four years ago in the Outer Banks, she started running and never looked back. Then 8, Caroline wasn’t too interested in running, but she joined the afterschool club because her friends did. They moved on to other things, but Caroline stayed with running, always looking for the next challenge.

Her real inspiration came from watching her mom run. “My mom ran a half marathon and a 9-year-old beat her at the finish line,” Caroline said. “I thought I could do that too. It inspired me.”

Caroline, now a seventh grader, and her mom, Wendy, ran 26 races together that first year. She stayed with GO FAR through sixth grade. “I kept coming back because it was fun,” Caroline said. “It was a good way to exercise. I don’t really like to train so this was a good way to train and condition.”

But Caroline took away more than fun and exercise. “The one thing I think it has really taught her is perseverance and the need to work hard and not give up,” Wendy said. “I have seen her fall two miles into a race with a bloody knee and fight to finish it. I have seen her dig really deep to gut out a new time. More importantly, she has learned it’s not always about standing on the podium but doing the best you can do at whatever you start out to complete. Sometimes it’s more of an endurance run to meet those goals.”

GO FAR led Caroline to her latest venture: a 200-mile relay. She ran the Ragnar in Florida this past February with her mom and eight other teammates. She had three legs in the relay: 5.9 miles, 2.9 miles, and 3.5 miles. After 33 hours with little sleep and about 95 degree weather, she gave the hand-off to the final runner at the next to last leg.

Caroline had her teammates’ support, but it was a different experience for her all around. “I wanted to run my legs by myself. Since it was in Florida, it was much hotter than the winter conditions that we had been having and I prefer to run in the cold. This was different than any other race because I was running different times of the day and night in unfamiliar areas, across bridges, with little sleep.”

Wendy had expected that she would have to run with Caroline, but she saw how determined her daughter was, before and after the race. “The next night she asked where we were going next and was on the website looking for a new location,” Wendy said.

“If it had not been for GO FAR and all the other races I had participated in, I would not have been interested in doing the relay,” Caroline said. “My mom had done several and when she told me the next one was from Miami to Florida Keys, I asked to be one of the 10 runners on the team. I was the youngest Ragnarian to run it.”

And who knows? Maybe this time Caroline inspired someone who saw her run.

Caroline and Wendy Murray at the Ragnar in February (above). Below, Caroline with Robin Lindsay and GO FAR Coach Samantha Brown.