Herbert L. White
THE CHARLOTTE POST
There was a time Audrey Long and Ryannne Persinger couldn’t comprehend running 26.2 miles.
No longer.
Persinger and Long are not only distance runners, but they’re also spanning the globe in the process. The Charlotteans are heading to Sydney, Australia, for a marathon on Aug. 31, their second international race together. Persinger, a media relations professional and former Post reporter, started running to escape the boredom of treadmills.
In the process, she discovered a supportive community.
“I ran by myself, and then I when I joined [a] group, I said I can’t believe I used to run by myself, because it’s so much enjoyable when you have people to run with,” she said. “People have different things that they’re trying to attain, and they have different paces, so they want to get faster and get their times down. That’s just something from me personally that I’m not interested in doing.”
Persinger’s first exposure to distance running was 5-kilometer (3.1 miles) races in Charlotte. She joined Run For Your Life in University City to train for the 2022 Yosemite half-marathon in California, then sought another challenge. Long, the more experienced runner, had an idea.
“When I joined the group, they decided to do the Marine Corps Marathon in 2023, so that was my first marathon,” Persinger said. “And then last year, Audrey tricked me into going to Berlin, so that was my second marathon. And now she’s pulled me back again, and we’re going to Sydney.
“It’s all her fault.”
As of 2015, approximately 509,000 people run marathons in the United States annually, according to Running USA. That number represents finishers in roughly 1,100 marathons held across the country annually.
Long wanted to try a marathon but wasn’t sure she could complete a distance race. It was a pipe dream, a distance only the truly dedicated could pull off.
“It was a bucket list item, and not because I had run before,” she said. “I didn’t run in high school or college or any other time before then. I can remember in 2010 my boss coming to work one day and he said, ‘oh, I got up and ran 5 miles,’ and I looked at him like that is the craziest thing in the world. Who runs 5 miles? I just thought it was crazy.”
A friend convinced Long to give it a try, then suggested tackling one of the most best-known marathons in the United States. Unaware of the training necessary to finish a race, she applied for the 2013 Marine Corps Marathon.
“I had a friend one day just talking about running,” Long said. “She was like, ‘Audrey, you should run the Marine Corps Marathon.’ … I said, ‘What’s that?’ And she said, ‘Oprah did. And then I was like, ‘OK, if Oprah ran the Marine Corps Marathon, I’m gonna run the Marine Corps Marathon.’”
Long, who has also run in Toronto, took a four-year break from marathoning before connecting with Persinger in 2022.
“We just started running together,” said Long, who has competed in the Novant Health Charlotte Marathon. “Ryanne said I’m dragging her in, but I think other runners will influence you.”
Long can attest to that. She’s tried – and failed – 12 times to land a spot in the New York City Marathon, but a fellow runner suggested London – one of the world’s toughest courses – as a challenge.
“I said, ‘London? I’ll try again,’” Long said. “It’s a lottery, it’s a world major, so I applied, thinking it’s just going to be like New York. And then I got in.”
Next up was convincing Persinger to go abroad. The first step was Germany last year; this year it’s Australia.
“I did London, and then I [dragged] Ryanne in for Berlin,” Long said. “I said, ‘it’s the 50th anniversary – we have to do the Berlin marathon.’ And then with Sydney, I told her, ‘Hey, it’s the first year. It’s a world major. That’s how the running community does. They will pull you in.”
Competition, Persinger and Long agree, is secondary to finishing. That’s their first and only goal – in addition to exploring Sydney’s sights and culture.
“I graduated college with no cum laude, just thank you Lordy, so I’m the same way with running,” the 2003 Johnson C. Smith University graduate said. “As long as I finish … I am happy because I’m a back-of-the-pack type runner. I do intervals, the run-walk method, so I’ll run for a minute, walk for 30 seconds.”
Said Long: “Running, to me, is recreation only. … A lot of people always want to ask, what’s your time, not celebrate that you completed a marathon. I think they are trying to analyze, ‘are you as fast as those Kenyans’ or something, not to congratulate you.
“… My point is 26 miles is 26 miles. I don’t care if it takes three hours or seven hours, you’re still a marathoner and you’re still part of the 1% of the world population
