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Sabrina Lott Started Running Strong
- Favorite Training pants, Fabletics pants because they fit curves and have amazing sales.
- Favorite shirts: I wear race t-shirts that I’ve cut into tanks, the rabbit EWM training tanks and our beautiful new For All Mothers+ shirts.
- Favorite Shoes: Brooks – currently Glycerin 22 because they were available in Xwide.
- Salty Britches ointment
How Sabrina Lott Turned One 5K Into A Life Of Coaching, Community, And Courage
Running stories often start with a race medal, a rough training run, or a dare from a friend. For Sabrina Lott, it started with her daughter’s mental health, a pair of running shoes, and a simple question: “Can I do more than this?”
Today, Sabrina is a running coach, a marathon finisher, a mother of three, and a loud voice for everyday athletes who have been told they don’t belong. Her story shows how starting to run can change a body, a family, and a whole community even when money is tight, time is short, and the doubts are loud.
More than anything, Sabrina’s journey proves this: if she can do it in her life, her body, her reality, someone reading this can too.
How Running Entered Sabrina’s Life
Sabrina didn’t start running to chase a race time. She started to protect her oldest daughter.
Her daughter joined cross country in high school to help manage mental health symptoms. Running after dark wasn’t safe in their area, so Sabrina went with her. Her daughter would run ahead and loop back while Sabrina did her best run-walk behind her, learning how to move again after years of chronic health issues.
At the same time, doctors were telling Sabrina that her health problems would never improve unless she lost weight. She started moving more, lost a lot of weight, and decided to sign up for two 5Ks in San Francisco, the Divas 5Ks. She admits she walked them both.
“I walked them because I could not run,” Sabrina says. “But I convinced myself that I could do these 5Ks. And I did them, and I survived.”
A week later, the medal and race shirt were still hanging around, staring at her. That’s when the question popped up in her head: Could I have done more?
She remembered a TV show saying the average adult should be able to run a mile in under 15 minutes. So she went to the public track at her old middle school to find out.
“I ran it at about 11:30,” she says, “and I was hooked. I was convinced that I could do it if I really put the time in.”
That one mile changed everything.
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From 5Ks To Marathons On A Budget
Once Sabrina proved to herself that she could run that mile, she started thinking bigger. A 10K in San Jose caught her eye. She was scared of being last, but her coworker signed up and then announced to the whole office that they were doing it.
They trained together, recruited more coworkers, and showed up on race day. Sabrina was not even close to last. In fact, she beat her own time goal by about 20 minutes.
“I beat my time goal because I trained,” she says. “Because I was taking care of myself.”
From there, the races kept coming. Sabrina and her oldest daughter did a series of events across the Bay Area. They ran in San Jose, across the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, and in Berkeley, where Sabrina had gone to college. Her daughter even placed in her age group at one race, something they didn’t realize until later because they never thought it was possible.
By 2020, Sabrina was training for her first half marathon. She crossed that finish line on March 1st. A week later, the world shut down.
“I would not be here had I not been a runner when the pandemic hit,” she says. “Running kept me alive because it kept me engaged in my body to be able to take care of my kids.”
She was living alone with her two girls. Her boyfriend and family were an hour away. But across the street was an empty industrial park. It became her training ground. There, she could run for as long as she needed, no mask, no crowd, just her breath and the sound of her feet.
Running didn’t just give her fitness. It helped her stay sober, helped her hydrate and fuel, helped her show up for her kids. Over time, Sabrina went from walking 5Ks to finishing three marathon distance races.
She did it with limited money and gear. “I trained for my marathon last year in one pair of shoes for my long runs and one pair for my short runs because that’s all I could afford,” she says. Early on, she ran in hand-me-down compression tights because she couldn’t afford the ones doctors said she needed.
Every finish line, every mile, became proof: even with a small budget and a full plate, she could still do big things.
Taking Up Space As A Black Woman Runner
Sabrina is mixed race, Black and white, and grew up in the Bay Area. She has often felt like she was not “enough” for any group.
“To this day,” she says, “I still struggle with being not Black enough, not white enough, not fitting in.”
Running gave her a new way to push back on those voices. For her, running is “the great equalizer”. This is the place where people from all walks of life share the same start line, the same hills, the same doubt at mile 20.
Still, she knows that people often look at her and do not see an athlete. “All my life, I’ve been told that people of my size and my setup don’t run,” she says. She is a Black woman. She is in a larger body. She is a mother. She comes from a lower economic background. On paper, these are all things that some people think do not fit the image of a “runner.”
But Sabrina has done three marathon distance events. She has danced during races. She has kept moving even when strangers shouted things like, “She moves good for a fat girl.”
Those words used to hurt. Now they fuel her voice. “I want people to know that people like me can do it,” she says. “Absolutely, look at me. We belong here too.”
Why Sabrina Became A Running Coach
Sabrina never planned on becoming a running coach. In fact, she didn’t even believe she deserved a coach when she was starting out.
“One of the reasons that I became a coach,” she says, “was because I couldn’t afford a coach.”
That experience shaped the kind of coach she wanted to be. She now offers different levels of coaching so more women can afford support. She works with a wide range of athletes: an ultra runner, marathoners, and even a friend who runs a six-minute mile.
“I don’t have to run a six-minute mile with him,” she points out. Coaching for her is not about matching someone’s pace. It’s about building plans, offering support, and helping athletes see their own strength.
She also sees herself as a bridge. As an athlete, she often felt she didn’t belong. As a coach, she walks into those same spaces on purpose.
“I’ve given myself the permission to be the bridge between the people like me who don’t feel like they belong and the people over there who are looking at us,” she says. “I am going to show up in these spaces because you need to see that there are people out here like me who belong here.”
The advice she repeats to her athletes is the same advice she wishes she had heard sooner: “Ask for help and accept it.”
Running, Motherhood, And A Different Legacy
Sabrina’s running is not just about miles. It’s about legacy.
“I’m doing this for them,” she says, talking about her three children. “I want them to have a different childhood than I had, but I also want them to have a different life than I had.”
She started running with her oldest daughter, who now has a child of her own and is getting back into running because she remembers how much it helped. Her middle daughter lives with similar mental health challenges and has done two Mother’s Day 5Ks with her. The first year, she walked. The second year, she chose to run-walk, on her terms.
At home, they even bought a walking pad so her daughter can move inside when she wants to. Movement, in their house, is normal. It’s not punishment. It’s not something only “fit” people do.
Her youngest, still a baby, goes to run group and treats it like her own party. “She thinks the whole group is for her,” Sabrina laughs. The baby knows where the finish line is. She knows who will play with her when the adults are done.
Through all of this, Sabrina is trying to give her kids something she didn’t have: a model of what it looks like to do hard things on purpose, and then laugh and dance in the middle of them.
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Training For Hills, Training For Life
Sabrina likes to say that she started “training for the hills so that I could train for the hardship in life.”
She has lived through miscarriages, pregnancy complications, and moments when she truly didn’t know if she would survive. She has sat in hospital rooms and fought to be heard. She has argued with doctors and said, “I know my body. I have been through hell. You’re going to listen to me.”
So when the hill gets steep in a race, or the heat feels unbearable, she reminds herself: You’ve done harder than this.
That mindset is what she wants other runners, especially women, Black runners, runners in larger bodies, single parents, and anyone who feels left out, to carry with them.
She tells her athletes, “Celebrate everything you do.” Did you only finish 75% of your training plan? Celebrate that 75%. Did you go out for a walk/run even when the kids were sick and work was stressful? Celebrate that.
“There are plenty of people who will point out what you haven’t done,” she says. “Celebrate what you did, 100%.”
Sabrina may already feel like she has done what she set out to do. She has proved what her body can do. She has shown up as a coach, a mother, a Black woman, and a runner, even when people told her she didn’t belong.
But every time she laces up, there is someone watching. In her house, at her run group, or scrolling past a dancing video online who quietly thinks, If she can do it, maybe I can too.
That might be the most powerful finish line she’ll ever cross.
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