Keira D’Amato: Rewriting Records and Redefining ‘Runner’s Prime’

Keira D’Amato redefines running with record-breaking comebacks and witty Strava posts, proving it's never too late to chase new goals and have fun along the way.

Most runners hang up their racing spikes after a decade or so on the competitive circuit. Not Keira D’Amato. She hit restart in her thirties, proving that it’s never too late to chase new PRs or bring some fun to the running world.

“I took the scenic route in running,” the Virginia native says, chuckling. “I started running in High School and during my first race I thought, ‘This is terrible, everything hurts.’ But I’m not a quitter and I worked through that, and I finished. I’ve never been so proud of myself. That’s when I realized I love the cycle of doing something that scares you, working through it when you don’t know if you can finish it, and being proud once you accomplish it. That’s when I got into running full-time. It was my Round 1 of running.”

👉 FOLLOW Keira D’Amato on Strava

Keira dominated the competitive running scene throughout her college years and even continued racing post-graduation. But then, an unexpected setback halted her progress just two years out of college – an injury that would change everything. “I had something called a tarsal coalition,” she shares, explaining the rare and painful condition. Unable to afford the surgery, she faced a harsh reality: “I was forced out. I had to quit running.”

Any athlete can feel the weight of Keira’s words. The loss of identity, the crushing realization that your life is suddenly veering off the path you’d envisioned - it’s a pain only an athlete dealing with an injury knows too well. “I had to process giving up on all my dreams. I was ‘Keira, the runner’ but suddenly I was ‘Keira, the runner who didn’t run’ and I had to figure out who ‘Keira’ was,” she recalls.

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For the next eight years, Keira became ‘Keira, the runner who didn’t run at all.’

But that didn’t mean she stood still. She dove into other passions, first working in marketing for a running company, then launching her own real estate business, all while starting a family with two kids. During that time, she finally got the ankle surgery she needed, and with that, Round 2 of her running career was about to begin.

Keira’s Comeback: Round 2

“I started running again in my early thirties after I had my daughter,” Keira reflects. “When I went out for my first run, I was just going to try to run three minutes because I was very out of shape and I hadn’t run in years. I didn’t even make it three minutes – I managed 90 seconds,” she chuckles. Two days later, she made it to three minutes, and “celebrated like [she] had just won the Olympics.”

That small victory sparked something in Keira. The flood of memories came rushing back of how much she loved running. “It’s pure and freeing, and it’s the greatest symbolism for life. The more you put into it, the more you get out of it, and it makes me really happy,” she says, glowing.

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It didn’t take long for Keira to find her stride again. Just a few years after her Round 2 ‘comeback’ run she was already winning races. She became the world record holder for the women's-only 10-mile distance, a three-time USA Track & Field national champion, and she set the American marathon record in 2022 with a time of 2:19:12 at the Houston Marathon – until Emily Sisson surpassed it later that year. In 2023, she held the half marathon American Record after running 66:39 at the Gold Coast Half Marathon in Australia. More recently, she won the 20K USATF Championship in early September, clocking 1:06.25. It’s no surprise Nike signed her in 2021.

“Everything I learned during that elaborate ‘halftime show’ of not running for eight years set me up to reach the goals I was able to hit in Round 2 of my running career,” she says with a smile. “I learned how to love running, how to have fun with running, and that it wasn’t only about how fast you can run. It made running so much deeper for me.”

Keira’s Strava vibe

One of the ways Keira keeps the fun alive in her running journey is through her witty Strava run titles, which garner thousands of kudos and funny interactions. “I first joined Strava when I started running again and I had two followers: my husband and my mother-in-law,” she recalls with a laugh.

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“I was running for those two kudos a day. That was so encouraging to me because even if I was just trying to run three minutes a day, it meant that it was connecting me to a group of people who weren’t physically on the run with me, but who were supporting me in those goals.”

It wasn’t enough for Keira to log her runs as ‘Morning Run’ or ‘Afternoon Run.’ “I wanted to make the titles of my runs on Strava more engaging, so I started adding popsicle jokes as my run titles,” she grins.

For a taste of her signature humor, here are a few of her recent Strava ‘joke’ titles:

•  How likely is it for a cow to be struck by lightning? Medium rare.”

• “Snoopy's official resignation letter stated, ‘I'm tired of working for Peanuts’.”

• “Switching from Monopoly to Scrabble is a real game changer.”

• “If you suck at playing trumpet, that's probably why.”

Dare we call them ‘mom jokes’? Absolutely, and we mean that in the best way.

Levity and laughing aside, Keira’s posts are multifaceted. They hold her accountable on days when motivation wanes, and they have created a community of people who either run or are inspired to start. “We are inundated with so much serious stuff in life, so if people pull up my Strava profile and get a laugh that’s one of the reasons I love writing funny posts. Also, if I can encourage people to move their bodies in any way and get out and have fun while doing it, that’s huge for me,” she shares.

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“In Round 1, I thought you had to be really serious and work hard to be successful. While in this second round, I've realized I can have a lot of fun, and I can be laughing, and I can also be really successful, actually even more successful, because I'm a happier person.”

Speaking of a successful Round 2, Keira is gearing up to run the Chicago Marathon on October 13th. “I’m feeling really excited to put all my training to the test. I’ve done all my homework, now I can’t wait to take the test and see how I do,” she says, buzzing with anticipation.