You are a liar and a fraud.
You are not a runner.
I have seen your few videos
where you actually pretend to run.
What a joke.
You are moving no faster than what I can walk.
You expect people to actually be stupid enough
to believe this (bleep).
A true professional runner is not overweight
which is what you are.
A person who runs marathons for a living is not overweight
which is what you are, (bleep) you.
You want to further fat acceptance and people
to kill themselves in your perverse idea
of beauty, (bleep) you.
And that email actually came while I was finishing up a 50K.
I was actually engaged in that activity
that this person had accused me of being a fraud at.
(peaceful music)
I live in Rabun Gap, Georgia
which is in the North Georgia Mountains.
I grew up in Brooklyn, New York.
It's very different from Rabun Gap, Georgia.
And I was born and raised there.
My name is Mirna Valerio, and I am a teacher,
an ultra runner, a mom, a writer,
a blogger, a singer, a diversity practitioner,
and lots of other things.
Nobody in my family did anything athletic,
so it was foreign to me, just doing exercise on purpose.
It was absolutely foreign.
(upbeat music)
I love my body the most when I'm out running.
Even if it's hard and even if I'm having a bad day,
I know I have my body and it works
and it is allowing me to do this thing
and so I feel really strong and powerful,
and in that I feel beautiful.
So this summer I am booked almost every weekend
with races and other events.
The first thing I have going on is a half marathon
in Boulder, Colorado, and then the following week
I have a trail marathon in Massachusetts.
I have a 50K up in Vermont,
and then that's when I start tapering for TransRockies.
I never thought that I could run 18 miles one day
and then 10 miles the next, but I can.
I'm gonna go, okay.
All right, my body got this.
We are in Black Mountain, North Carolina
at the Black Mountain Monster 12 and 24 hour race.
One of the reasons I'm here is number one,
is so I can be with my friends.
I have a bunch of friends here,
and we all love to do trail running
and to hang out and camp.
The other reason I'm here is because I wanted to get
my first 50K of the season out of the way.
So I'll be running and hiking and crawling for 12 hours.
I'm hoping to do 30, 31, 33 miles today,
and I'm feeling pretty good about it.
I feel strong, I feel capable.
I feel like I'm ready.
Love you, guys.
I love you.
I don't know a whole lot about the course
because I didn't do any research.
But I do know it's pretty flat.
But in trail runner speak that could mean
that they're rolling hills.
It could mean that there's 9,000 feet of elevation
so I don't really know what to expect.
I'll just see when I get there.
Well, I'm Black, I'm a big girl.
Actually nowadays people know who I am
so it's not as big of a deal.
But before, I would show up and I'd get some looks like
okay, what do we have here, alright.
Is she doing the 5K?
Is she walking?
You know people will just say things sometimes,
well, you're kinda heavy to be out here running.
Maybe you should go to the gym.
Or but yeah, people say stuff all the time.
I finished three loops which is nine miles.
It feels good, like I feel really strong.
I try my salami sandwich which is what I like to have
'cause it has lots of salt in it
and I've got my carbs in the bread
and my protein in the cheese.
I have some of my chips, my jalapeno chips,
just in case my stomach starts acting up,
'cause somehow it settles my stomach.
And then a little bit of drink.
The course is awesome.
It is like this varied terrain.
There's like really pristine single track trail.
There's double track trail.
But yeah, so I'm ready to go finish some more loops.
I'm doing okay.
My back is still really stiff, but my legs are working.
Sometimes they work just on their own
without any input from my brain, and so that's good.
So it just keeps me moving forward, and yeah,
I mean I'm tired but I can do this.
Like clearly I've done 18 miles already,
so I can do more, and so I'm stoked about that.
See you in a bit.
Trail running is really hard.
It's not an easy thing for me,
but I love that about it that's it's not easy
but I'm still able to do it.
I do it because I do want to show people that it's possible.
You know I may not be fast, I may be the last person,
but for me that doesn't matter.
Hello, everybody, this The Mirnavator,
and I just finished nine loops,
and I'm going for a 10th
which will be a little bit over 30 miles and then I'm done.
I'm so happy.
I sound drunk, I sound drunk.
- [Woman] Are you?
- One more, we're gonna do one more.
You got it.
- This is my last loop, and I'm ecstatic and in pain.
My legs feel great, my back doesn't.
And yeah, I'm ready to finish.
I'm really excited.
First 50K of the season.
I got my cellphone to take a couple of selfies
with my friends just to document the experience
'cause that's what I do.
I love documenting the experience
so I could share it with others.
I stopped right in the middle of the trail,
and I really should not have been reading my email
on the final leg of my 50K.
I shouldn't have been, but I was.
You are a liar and a fraud.
A true professional runner is not overweight
which is what you are.
You want to further fat acceptance and people
to kill themselves in your perverse idea of beauty.
There's a little bit of emotion that comes to the surface
because I think why would somebody
reach out to me and say that?
Why would you want to do that?
Why do you want to intentionally hurt people?
This is definitely the first time I've gotten something
that was so targeted and intentional
to me personally.
I'm not a fraud, I run.
I run slowly and sometimes I walk but I run.
And I'm a big girl, I know that.
But that doesn't have anything to do with anything.
I still get out there and run.
I do what I need to do.
This guy had one idea of what a runner should look like,
how fast a runner should be going
and that people who had my body type or body weight
really shouldn't be out there.
That was the message I got.
This is real, fat shaming is real.
There's a reason why people have body dysmorphia.
It's because of things like that because people
can be so mean and so limited in their view
of what a human body can look like.
Okay, go Mirna.
I know the truth.
The truth is that I'm a runner.
I'm not a fraud, so I wanted to celebrate that,
and so I chose to concentrate on that and to focus
on the good things that came out of the race
because it was 99% good except for that one thing
that happened with that email.
That was not that person's moment, it was mine.
You gotta get warm, let's get you warm.
Oh, my god, my arms are about to fall off they hurt.
I finished.
I did 31 miles which is 50K.
Tonight I'm gonna head to the showers
and take a nice hot shower and warm up a little bit
maybe drink a glass or two of wine and yeah,
I'm gonna post stuff on social media.