We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Hillary Burgess. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Hillary below.

Hillary, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. What did your parents do right and how has that impacted you in your life and career?

I grew up surrounded by running. As a child, my mom would take my siblings and me to drop my dad off for his long marathon training runs, or to cheer him on along the course. He was (and is) also a track and cross country coach, so I experienced those sides of the sport as a spectator early on. When I was 7, my dad asked if I wanted to run a 5K, and it was that 5K that began my 25-year (and counting) running career.

But as much as a running buff as my dad is, what he truly did right as both a coach and a parent is that he has always perfectly toed the line between “coach” and “supportive dad”. He will put together training plans and attend my races, but if I ever come up short on a goal, he never makes me feel like a failure. Running has always been my choice, and he is there as an extra source of support instead of additional pressure.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started my running page at the very beginning of 2023. Honestly, it came about because I felt like I was annoying all my non-running friends by constantly posting about my races on my personal Instagram account, but it quickly grew into something much more. My account grew fairly quickly just by posting about my runs, my background, my goals, and some of the products that I use. But it wasn’t until I started making fun of myself (specifically my terribly unflattering race photos) that it grew exponentially.

I’m an incredibly average runner. I’m not winning races, and I am not coming in last place. I don’t have an incredible story about overcoming illness or losing half my body weight or anything like that. I’m just a regular middle-of-the-pack runner with a ton of passion for the sport. And being incredibly average, it would be very easy for my page to get lost in a sea of other incredibly average runners.

It all started with a contest sponsored by Fleet Feet where runners could win a $100 gift card by submitting their absolute worst race photo. Just two months before that, I had run my first marathon, with what turned out to be COVID (I was not symptomatic prior to beginning the race). As such, my finishing photos were atrocious – I was basically knocking on death’s door, begging to be let in. I ended up winning the contest, and surprisingly, people thought the horrible photos were hilarious.

So I began posting more of them. And it turned out that although everyone had similarly awful race photos, they were embarrassed to post them, so by doing so, I kind of ended up lightening the experience for everyone else.

I post a lot more than just bad race photos. I try to strike a good balance between educational posts, “serious” personal progress posts, lighthearted reels, inspiring content, and product highlights. I think the bad race photo schtick would get old quickly if it was the entirety of my content, so I try to keep things interesting and diverse. But the overarching theme with everything that I post is relatability. I may be an average runner, but I’m an average runner that many people can identify with.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

When I started my running page, I went on an an enormous following spree, to the extent that Instagram would pretty regularly limit my following privileges for 24 hours to make sure I was not a spammer. I began by following runners I knew personally, as well as all of the running brands that I was already using. From there, I started following users who would interact with those brand pages, especially those who were running in their profile thumbnails.

Throughout my entire social media journey, I have found that the single most important thing is genuine engagement. If someone comments on my post, I try to not only respond, but to check out their page and comment on their running content. If someone tags me in something, I try to share it, along with my own commentary. I make an effort to respond to every single direct message I receive, and to do so in a sincere way.

A lot of my secondary success came from brand partnerships. I did not receive free products from day one, so I would post my thoughts on gear that I purchased for myself. This caught the eye of a few smaller brands who would send me products to review, and then my content would be featured on their page. Over time, I have gotten to the point where I am often paid by brands to promote their products, and I can be a bit more choosy on which brands to partner with, but starting out I was willing to try out any running adjacent product that was offered to me. Every single brand has their own set of followers, and collaborative posts have been a big part of growing my follower base.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

As a runner, resilience is my middle name. If runners gave up when things got tough, none of us would make it through our first jog around the block.

But as a running content creator, resilience has become more than just physically pushing through the discomfort of endurance races. It’s also pushing through the discomfort of my own self image, and learning to embrace the imperfections.

I am imperfect in every sense of the word. Most of us are, but social media isn’t often indicative of that. It’s oftentimes a perfectly curated highlight reel of only the parts of us we want others to see. A course I took in college called it “the mediated self”.

Insecurities about my pace and my appearance (specifically my not-so-thin body) have been present for most of my running career, but they were magnified once I began my public running profile. It is so easy to compare myself to the faster, thinner, better looking, or more whatever runners I see on Instagram. But getting to a place where I realize my own self worth as a runner, and where I publicly display that self worth, has been a journey of resilience.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: @running_up_that_hillary
• Other: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0Z7qQUc64rixKRT1CPL5wE?si=Y_4VNt8WQh6bTmZwsVd_Ag&pi=u-3W-XZil1TH2-