Smita Kolhatkar

Smita has enjoyed running and races since 5th grade in Mumbai, India where she grew up, training with a coach from whom she learned to never say I Can’t, something she tells her students when they want to say I can’t. Smita continued running through her school and college days then work life, moving to the United States in 1993.She ran her first marathon in June 2003. Since then, she has run fifteen marathons, with breaks in between based upon her injuries. It has been gratifying to get friends hooked onto the love for running as well. The biggest hiatus has been between April 2019 (when she did Boston to Big Sur) and now. London will be her fifth world major and the first in over three years. It will also be almost exactly three years after a major fall she had, a few months after losing both her parents within six weeks of each other. The lesson of I can’t has really helped Smita in her training for London. Some days were so terrible in terms of performance, she was inclined to just say I quit. It has been challenging to plough through but she knows well worth it.Smita lives in California with her family. Her daughter now works as a personal trainer. Her husband is a software engineer, her son is a senior at Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD in Savannah, Georgia) and she is an educator (TK-8). She is really excited about the London marathon because she loves the city and is doing it with her college friends whom she has known for thirty seven years, all of whom are part of the Runbuk team.