Krystine Beneke
Krystine Beneke started her athletic career at a very young age, dancing for the Houston Ballet Academy in Houston, Texas, where she grew up. Initially, Krystine’s parents strongly encouraged her to pursue ballet professionally, in part due to her natural aptitude for ballet, but also to honor her grandmother’s love for dance.
As a young person, Krystine’s weekends, summers, and most available free moments were spent at the ballet studio. High school, however, represented a choice, a fork in the road, where ultimately Krystine needed to choose what she wanted to do.
“My parents […] were very transparent and that I would need to drop out from high school in order to pursue this in a more professional capacity […] I just wanted to have, not that I didn't have a normal upbringing, but wanted a little bit more normalcy and not as rigid with everything that entailed pursuing that path as a ballerina.”
Simultaneously, while pursuing ballet, she began running with her father. In contrast to ballet, running was fun. Krystine and her father would run through their neighborhood, and eventually Krystine began competing in middle school and high-school track events. In middle school, she competed in 400s and hurdles. In high school, she enjoyed a variety of distances and events from 300 hurdles to 4 x 4 to two milers. It was through these experiences as a ballerina and a young runner that Krystine learned to test her physical limitations.
“I always like to say that really from a young age I learned to test physical limitations and also to discover what truly just laid in the mind and [what] our own self-imposed limitations were,” Krystine said.
After high school, Krystine went on to college to study finance and international business. Upon graduating, she began her career in banking, working in New York for six years. She began focusing on longer distance races, starting with a New York Road Runners 15K that she ran with a friend. She was able to carry the foundation of ballet through high school, college, and into her adult life.
“I've always had the mentality of, I'm going to try things that people don't typically want to try. That was one of the things that really propelled me more into distance running, the half- marathon, and the full marathons, in that, not only do I look at it from a physicality perspective, it's how can I test myself mentally?”
Similar to her path in ballet, Krystine found she had a natural ability as a runner. Within the span of a few years, Krystine completed 15 full marathons and 26 half-marathons. She found herself competing at the highest levels in the sport, all while building a start-up digital IP acquisition company. Eventually, Krystine went on to qualify for, and run, the Boston Marathon in 2014, with a PR time of 2:59:47.
Krystine warns of the darker side of competition. She encourages runners to find balance in their personal, professional, and competitive lives. “I think I was overtraining […] I was running a half-marathon and it just felt like I was coming to a complete halt. I was on target for 1:24, 1:25, and ended up finishing the half in 1:31 […] I was so fixated [...]. It's a whole discovery process of not being able to compete physically in the manner that I was accustomed to and beginning to discover who “myself” was.”
Although Krystine has put running for competition aside for the moment, she has found joy and success in other pursuits, such as painting. Krystine has had her abstract artwork exhibited in renowned locations such as the International Art Museum of America in San Francisco.
Krystine offers runners and goal seekers alike a bit of sage advice: “Be bold, just be bold and determine what you want to pursue. Don't let anything hold you back […] and just be honest with yourself in terms of what you want to pursue and the reason behind it.”
Note about the author: Pilar Arthur-Snead is a Road Runners Club of America Level 1 Certified Coach, Ultrarunner, and the host of The Last Tenth Podcast. She is based in Albany, NY.
