# 125: $10 Walmart Shoes to Marathon Finisher: Running the Austin Marathon w/ Ashley Bree Page: https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-marathon-6901578/125-10-walmart-shoes-to-marathon-finisher-running-the-austin-marathon-w-ashley-bree Text version: https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-marathon-6901578/125-10-walmart-shoes-to-marathon-finisher-running-the-austin-marathon-w-ashley-bree.md Podcast: [My First Marathon](https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-marathon-6901578) Published: 2026-05-18T12:55:00+00:00 Episode link: https://audioboom.com/posts/8904646 Audio file: https://dts.podtrac.com/redirect.mp3/audioboom.com/posts/8904646.mp3?modified=1779109216&sid=5128391&source=rss Processing state: not_requested JSON: https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/my-first-marathon-6901578/episodes/125-10-walmart-shoes-to-marathon-finisher-running-the-austin-marathon-w-ashley-bree Duration seconds: 2566 ## Resource Ashley never considered herself a runner. As a kid she dabbled in sports, hated cross country, and didn't think twice about it. It wasn't until her early thirties, going through a divorce and looking for somewhere to put all that energy, that she laced up a pair of $10 Walmart shoes and headed out onto the country roads behind her house with nothing but cheap earbuds and an Eminem playlist. She had no plan, no training knowledge, and no idea what was coming. Fast forward a few years and Ashley, a 911 dispatcher who has spent nearly two decades taking calls from the streets of Austin, decided on a whim one late summer night to sign up for the Austin Marathon and run the very roads she's been protecting for her entire career. She built her own training plan from scratch to fit her rotating shift schedule, tackled the heat and humidity of a Texas summer, and showed up to the start line ready to prove something to herself that had been a long time coming. Follow along with Ashley: @ashleybblank Follow along with the show: 👣 Personal IG/TikTok: @tay.says / @taysays 🎙️ Podcast IG/TikTok: @myfirstmarathonpod 📺 YouTube: @MyFirstMarathonPodcast 🌐 Website & extras: myfirstmarathon.co & myfirstmarathon.co/resources Shop merch! - myfirstmarathon.com - click on "shop" Join the First Marathoner Community! - skool.com/myfirstmarathon ## Actions - request_transcript: `POST https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/my-first-marathon-6901578/episodes/125-10-walmart-shoes-to-marathon-finisher-running-the-austin-marathon-w-ashley-bree/transcription-requests` — Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode. - read_markdown: `GET https://stenobird.com/podcast/my-first-marathon-6901578/125-10-walmart-shoes-to-marathon-finisher-running-the-austin-marathon-w-ashley-bree.md` — Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource. A page view does not enqueue transcription. Agents should invoke `request_transcript` explicitly when they need this episode processed. ## Transcript Full transcripts are not published on public pages unless there is a clear rights basis.