From apologist to activist: Northern Colorado runner pushes races across the state to be more inclusive after wheels got her back into the sport she loves

Julia Beckley flips her pushrim chair backwards to push up a hill as she races in Colfax Marathon earlier this year in Denver. Beckley was diagnosed with hypophosphatasia, a rare genetic bone disorder that makes her prone to bone breaks. In spite of this, she races in marathons across Colorado. Photo by Joshua Polson.

By Dan England

Julia Beckley pulls up to a Runners Roost in Englewood on a beautiful sunny evening in late June, which is offering a brief respite for a time in the season when summer begins to finalize plans to roast us on the 4th of July.

Inside, many of the runners are already expressing their gratitude for the cool-down, as even the low 80s feels nice after the hot day. Outside, Beckley worries just a little when she steps outside her car and starts to assemble her pushrim chair, what many commonly call a racing wheelchair. 

After pulling out her racer, pumping up her tires and organizing her bag of supplies, she decides to bury those fears, the way she has 1,000 times before, and greet her friends with her trademark grin. She’s nervous about the heat — even in its reduced form, she doesn’t know what it will do to her — but these other runners are a security blanket in case something goes wrong. 

They’ve been there for her before. Some of them helped her run the Colfax Marathon in mid-May. The distance itself wasn’t significant — she’d done marathons before — but running it meant she was the first wheelchair athlete in more than a decade to do Colfax. This was, in part, because Colfax wanted it that way. Colfax wasn’t too thrilled at Beckley’s insistence, with the help of friends, that she run the marathon. Three years ago, when she discovered pushrim allowed her to run and become an athlete again, dragging her out of depression, she ran any race that would take her. As she figured out how her life changed dramatically, she wanted others to experience that same gift. That meant changing minds. That meant pushing others to accept her new sport. 

Veronica Garofalo, of Denver, greets Beckley with a hug. She took a 6-mile leg at Colfax to help Beckley point out potholes, give a heads up to other runners and carry medical equipment such as Benadryl for her. Beckley could not have run the race without that support. 

Julia Beckley smiles as she talks with her team before the Colfax Marathon earlier this year in Denver. Photo by Joshua Polson.

“Why not?” said Garofalo, who ran marathons herself. “As a runner, I would hate to have to her pull out because she had no support.” 

Beckley uses a chair because her bones are brittle. She can walk, but that’s the most her body will endure. In 2011, after some stress fractures weren’t healing, she was diagnosed with hypophosphatasia, a rare genetic bone disorder. She has had many broken bones: She stopped counting after 38.

But her other disease is much more problematic. She has mast cell activation disorder, which can be triggered by fatigue, low blood sugar and exposure to heat and sunlight. Running isn’t exactly great for all those things. 

“Things can go wrong that other runners experience all the time,” Beckley said. “You might feel like shit at, say, mile 20, and then finish and say, ‘that sucked, and it’s over.’ But I wind up in the hospital.”

Indeed, she’s in the hospital quite a bit. She’s had a central line infection for fast doses of Benadryl and other medications as well as a tracheostomy for eight years, essentially a hole in her throat that helps her recover from episodes where she can’t breathe. Benadryl helps calm her activation disorder. She would most likely be dead without it. We could talk about this more, but Beckley has her own medical diagnosis, and it’s as accurate as any: “I just have a fucked-up body.” 

Teammates help Julia Beckley prepare for her race by preparing syringes of Benadryl to help counter some of the effects of her conditions. Photos by Joshua Polson.

Beckley prefers not to focus on the specifics anyway. She knows a lot about her condition, but she’s also bad at making any concessions for it: Running keeps her in shape and wards off depression, but it also can flare up her medical problems.

Most runners, to be fair, don’t like making concessions. They are used to pushing through tweaks and sprains, tummy aches and nausea, hills and times when oxygen feels like a scarce commodity. Beckley is not the first runner to run on stress fractures. 

Therefore, she refuses to stop. Life would be easier, for her and, sometimes, for others, if she did. But she would stop living.

“I was bullied pretty severely growing up,” Beckley said. “I’ve never truly felt like I fit in until my adult life in the running community. There are many saying to me that I’m not going to be able to do this. But when I get in a chair and have a good run, I think, ‘Wow, I can do this. I can do these hard things.’

She didn’t really want to be an activist. But now she knows it’s OK if she has to push. She knows that just getting to the starting line is the hardest part. 

Strong will but weak body

Julia Beckley wraps her hands carefully as she prepares for her race earlier this year in Denver. Photo by Joshua Polson.

As athletes will tell you, sometimes the body can’t do what the brain wants it to do. This is especially true with Beckley: She was a jock without a vessel. 

When she was 8, she broke her leg skiing. When she was 11, grass sent her into anaphylactic shock. Those two incidents were the beginning of her body’s lifelong rebellion against itself. By the time she was 18, she had 10 broken bones and too many stress fractures to count. She also had a disease that made her feel allergic to the world. When she stuck her hand in cold water, it swelled up. She walked into biology class her freshman year of high school and broke out in hives. That same year, she put on her suit for a swim team practice, and a minute later was covered in welts. A day later, she passed out at the pool and wasn’t allowed to swim that season. 

She spent three weeks at the Mayo Clinic when she was 15, as a homebound sophomore at Poudre High School. She read “And the Band Played On,” the famous non-fiction book about the AIDS epidemic, and related to the people in the story. She, too, had a weird, rare illness with seemingly unrelated symptoms ravaging her body, maybe to her death. For her project with the school’s IB program, she organized her tennis tournament for the Northern Colorado AIDS project.

When she was 17, she got her hypophosphatasia diagnosis over dinner by her parents. Her dad carried the gene that causes it, but he was asymptomatic until a few years ago. 

Julia Beckley smiles as she takes a seat in her pushrim chair before the Colfax Marathon begins earlier this year in Denver. Photo by Joshua Polson.

The diagnosis explained the bone issue. The mast cell disorder and other issues just seemed like an additional burden, but today they are the reason for her frequent visits to the hospital. Her freshman year in college, doctors intubated her, and she’s had the hole in her throat ever since.

The problems were frightening, but her parents refused to allow her to mope, and so, to this day, Beckley, now 28, refuses to mope. She works as a medical specialist for a plasma center and lives in Longmont. She has a fairly normal life for someone with her conditions. 

“They asked me what I wanted to do,” she said of her parents. “They told me that if I’m in pain, we can deal with that. Coaches told me that I’ve already been adapting to this for so long, it really doesn’t change anything. It just has a label now.”

“My parents never lowered expectations of me. With the amount of resources that have gone into keeping me alive, I’d better do something with that life.” 

Wheeling her way in

The sun begins to rise as Julia Beckley uses a street light to illuminate her work on her pushrim chair before the Colfax Marathon earlier this year in Denver. Photo by Joshua Polson.

Adapting, for Beckley, means using the pushrim chair. Beckley is able to walk, so using the chair means absorbing some criticism from those who think she just wants attention, but the pushrim has allowed her to participate in a sport she’s grown to love.

She points out that she can walk a mile throughout the day but that’s it. Anything more, she’s learned over years of trying to do more, leads to a fracture. 

Running, in fact, helped her dig out of a mental health crisis in 2017. She was living with her parents at the time and ended up sick in the hospital every week. Two years later she did a 5K and got three stress fractures that didn’t heal. She was lost until she discovered pushrim through Craig Hospital a few months after the race. She shimmied into the chair and felt whole again. 

“It was such an incredible feeling to sit in that chair,” Beckley said. 

Her first race that same year was a 5K, and it felt like her arms would fall off: A pushrim isn’t a free ride — that’s a big reason why Beckley and some pushrim users call it running — and she felt every turn of the wheels. She lost 60 pounds, began to work out regularly and spent more time in the chair. Since then, she’s completed 10 marathons, a few ultramarathons and one virtual 100-miler over several days. 

She needs people to run with her in case something happens, and they have to carry Benadryl with them, in case she goes into shock. She also loves running with groups for the camaraderie. She spent some time with the Greeley Stampeders Run Club as well as those in Runners Roost. 

Medical supplies is spread out and organized early in the morning as Julia Beckley and her team prepare for the Colfax Marathon in Denver. Photo by Joshua Polson.

Her athlete’s mentality serves her well as a runner, but it’s dangerous, far more so than a marathoner who refuses to adhere to the pain of a race. 

“I just want to keep going and push through,” Beckley said. “It’s sort of a rite of passage for runners to push through shit. But I had to have friends sit down with me and ask me what the fuck I was doing. My body can crash in a second. I was reckless with it.” 

She is fun and easy-going by nature: Her Facebook posts are full of crazy, goofy photos and wide grins, even during one of her many hospital stays. But she’s had to learn how to be calculating. 

“I am spontaneous,” Beckley said, “But spontaneity can kill me.” 

Apologist to activist 

Beckley, at first, was somewhat apologetic about using a pushrim to participate in races. She understood the derision. Even now, she wishes she didn’t have to use it. 

“I still grieve for the girl who wanted to play college tennis and soccer and swim,” Beckley said. “It’s not perfect.”

But she also finds herself less willing to make concessions because of what using the pushrim has done for her. 

Julia Beckley gets to her spot at the start line at the Colfax Marathon earlier this year in Denver. Photo by Joshua Polson.

“Wheels gave me independence, ability to contribute to society in the workforce and hope through sport,” she said. 

This led to pushing Colfax, pardon the pun, to allow her to participate in its marathon. Emails from the race director were resistant at first: The race hadn’t allowed a pushrim on the marathon since 2011, stating safety concerns because of the marathon route crossing paths with many Denver intersections as well as crowds of racers on foot. He offered Beckley the 5K and said many other races allow marathons. This may have been enough for Beckley at one point, but it wasn’t now. 

“If they won’t let me do it,” she said, “then who will?”

She contacted Mark Lucas, the executive director for the U.S. Association of Blind Athletes, who along with Tim Willis, an attorney, sent letters threatening action if Colfax didn’t allow her to participate. Willis had a special reason for his involvement: He was the first blind cross country runner in NCAA Division 1 history in 1990 and later collected five Paralympic medals in his career. 

Once Colfax allowed Beckley to run, Beckley said the race CEO, Andrea Dowdy, was professional and accommodating. Dowdy, in an interview, called the initial communication a “mixup” and called herself responsive when she first heard Beckley’s request. 

“My initial reaction was, ‘Let me take a look,’” Dowdy said.

Beckley gave her team T-shirts that said “Making History” and was the only pushrim chair that day. She finished the race in 5:23 with the help of several runners. When Colfax holds its next race, on May 19-20, 2023, it will allow pushrim and other disabled athletes, Dowdy said. They will have an option to start early or run in a regular corral. 

Dowdy said pushrim and other disabled athletes had asked for years to run the course, but she and others worried about the hills and busy intersections and other challenges. 

“We finally realized it was challenging for all participants,” Dowdy said. “This was the right time to make this kind of decision.” 

Julia Beckley prepares for her race in Denver. Photo by Joshua Polson.

Dowdy said Beckley was just one of many athletes who pushed Colfax to become more inclusive through the years, but there’s no doubt Beckley’s insistence helped turned the tide. Dowdy doesn’t know if Colfax will have more demand from pushrim athletes next year as a result of their decision. 

“There are a number of race choices for chair athletes,” she said, “with less turns and less elevation gain, and those might appeal to those who have less experience.” 

She also said planned to reach out to those who want to run regardless of their disability, as she did with Beckley. 

“We like to learn more about their situation,” Dowdy said. “We just want people to have a great experience.” 

Beckley’s journey from an apologist to activist took three years, she said. 

“I wasn’t speaking up at all,” she said. “I simply asked where I could go.”

That changed as she realized people not only were willing to help but seemed to enjoy it, such as the group from Runner’s Roost who volunteered to run a leg of Colfax with her, and she took part in inaugural wheelchair divisions for famous races such as the Mountain Avenue Mile and the Human Race. 

“When doors started to open and a spot for my voice was made, it changed from pushrim being about bettering my own quality of life to what can it do for others on a local-in-my-own-backyard level and what does it look like to nurture that,” she said. 

Julia Beckley races along side her teammates at the start of the Colfax Marathon in Denver. Photo by Joshua Polson.

One of her mentors (advocates, really) is Russ Brown, her favorite teacher at Poudre High School in Fort Collins who has since retired. He wasn’t surprised to see Beckley fight for a spot at Colfax. At first, Beckley’s competitive drive and desire to play sports outweighed a need to work hard for others as well as herself, Brown said. 

“When she saw that was a lane that wasn’t being filled,” he said, “she definitely jumped into that as well. She does want her life to have some purpose.” 

Brown nurtures that competitive side, even her stubbornness, because he believes she may need it. Many would be discouraged by frequent visits to the hospital and health issues leaving her fatigued and limited in what she can do. Beckley may very well have a short life span, but Brown thinks that’s up to Beckley as much as it is her body. 

“She is definitely feisty,” Brown said. “But given her health issues, if she wasn’t like that, she might not even be alive.”

Sometimes living is enough

The fact is, sometimes staying alive is enough. In early September, she wound up in the hospital again, battling a 103-degree fever for several days. Doctors eventually found bacteria in her blood, the result of an infection from one of her medical lines (an uncommon but not unusual occurrence). They also discovered an immune deficiency, something they hoped to address once she was discharged. As of Sept. 15, she remained in the hospital. 

Beckley wondered during this last hospital visit if she ever would be discharged. She wondered, for the first time in a while, as the fever burned through her body, if she would live through the infection. 

Julia Beckley races the Colfax Marathon earlier this year in Denver. Photo by Joshua Polson.

It showed how tenuous her fitness really was, because in order to run she needed to be healthy, and sometimes being healthy was a bigger challenge than running a marathon. 

Still, the running gave her something else to live for. Her quality of life changed three years ago, when she did a 5K by sitting in a racing chair. 

“I’m constantly exhausted so it’s a balancing act of getting to exercise but also not being so fatigued that I can’t eat dinner,” she said. “But I am an athlete. A slow one. But an athlete.” 

She looked forward to new challenges. Steamboat Marathon told her they would love for her to run in the race next year. She still wants to run 100 miles. 

She wants to continue to live. 

“The greatest feeling that has come from being a runner is knowing I will never be alone,” she wrote in a Facebook post. “Every start has thousands of stories, and we all come together to fight our greatest challenges on race days. 

“So give us one more day. Just one more try. One more time. We need you.”