First Marathon Story: "What If I Just Stopped": Hitting the Wall at Mile 12 and Finishing Anyway w/ Julie Satterthwaite

Taylor Sayles
Jul 20
4 min read

Split-screen video call with two smiling women; left in red gingham top, right with glasses and mic, text Julie Satterthwaite.

Julie grew up in a very active family. Her dad ran the Philadelphia Marathon when she was 4 or 5, her mom played volleyball in college, and her older brothers and sisters played sports too. She played soccer through high school, and while it was such a huge part of her life, it caused her a ton of anxiety around competition and her soccer games.

Her sophomore year of high school was rough; her grandfather had passed away from Parkinson's the year before, her dog died, her brother was deployed overseas in Iraq, and she poured her struggles with her mental health into a toxic relationship with her soccer season.

She graduated high school in 2020, and decided not to pursue soccer in college. Julie was focused on school and becoming a doctor, although the transition from soccer and sports being such a huge part of her life - to no part of her life - was a bit rough.

Getting Into Running

Julie had no interest in running, especially distance running. She decided she wanted to run a half marathon the spring of her senior year. A shoulder injury took her to the hospital, with no one sure what was wrong for over a year. She had to take a year off of sports and exercise, working with a great physical therapist who eventually got her thinking about movement again.

She started running again just as she started her first year of medical school. and decided that she wanted to run a marathon, like her dad and her brother. She wanted to run the Philadelphia Marathon, but the race had sold out. Julie decided to get a slot through a charity and raised money for Parkinson's research, in honor of her late grandfather.

Training for the Marathon

Julie started training in late July, pretty quickly after she initially signed up. She used Hal Higdon's 18-week Novice II plan, and started the work. Before signing up, she had run 10 miles max. She didn't fuel correctly, everything felt terrible, but it was a place to start.

Her first few long runs represented a steep learning curve. Learning fueling, and when to drink water, she found particularly difficult. Every time she got through another long run, though, she felt good. She just had to get out and do it.

Julie took every run slowly. She paced herself by asking, "Could I run this for hours?" and it helped her keep going injury-free. There were tons of trails for her to run, and even though her runs were taking her a long time, she was able to listen to her textbooks while she ran for her second year of medical school.

Once she was getting into 15, 16 miles and above, she started to feel like the training was a lot. She was out on the trails for 3+ hours, just thinking about how much she had to do for school. Why was she doing this?

The Tough Moments

Training through the summer definitely had its ups and downs. The heat and the East Coast humidity was hard to push through, and hard to fuel through. But even still, Julie loved training. It scratched the itch she missed from playing soccer and having a schedule. But then...that race day anxiety settled in.

Julie went in with A, B, C goals to help her anxious energy, but she was unprepared for how emotional she was going to be in the week leading up to race day. But she was also slowing healing parts of herself and the anxiety she had around sports. Running was a solo sport; this was all for her. She wanted to go out, and do well, and have fun - for her, and that was it.

Race day arrived. The first half went great. She saw her friends, her family, and her boyfriend all along the first 13 miles, and she felt great. Julie stuck with the pacer for her A goal, and felt great. But then she realized...she had gone out too fast. And at Mile 12, she hit the wall.

The back half of the Philadelphia Marathon has significant, steep hills. And she thought she'd be ok, but they ended up being much harder than she thought they'd be. Her paces dropped almost immediately. At Mile 15 or 16, she realized she'd have to do run-walk intervals. She picked people in front of her and followed them to get her through those tough moments.

The run-walk ended up helping her mentally. It kept her from having to conceptualize the distance that was left, and she broke it down into smaller chunks. She turned on her music at Mile 20, and then she saw her family around Mile 22, and then at Mile 25, she stopped to walk. The 4:30 pacer tapped her on the shoulder and told her to just keep moving...and she was able to get through that last mile, to become a marathoner.

Lessons Learned