For Ali Feller, running started between four lamp posts in New York City.
She had just moved from New Hampshire to Manhattan after college, chasing a dream of working in magazine publishing. She wasn’t a runner yet. In fact, growing up in Hopkinton, New Hampshire as a dancer, she actively avoided running.
Then she met her roommate.
“She had her half marathon medals hanging on her bedroom wall, and I was intrigued about why an adult would have medals and why they would display them,” Feller said.
At the time, Feller was living on a magazine publishing salary that barely covered rent and meals. Dance classes and gym memberships weren’t realistic. Running, though, was free.
So she started small.
“I sprinted out my front door and ran the length of four lamp posts along the FDR Drive,” she said.
The next day, she tried to make it one lamp post farther.
That tiny challenge became the foundation of a career and community that now reaches runners around the world.
Today, Feller is the creator and host of the wildly popular “Ali on the Run Show,” a podcast featuring elite athletes, celebrity runners, Olympians, and everyday runners alike. She’s also become a familiar face at some of the biggest races in the country, announcing and working broadcasts for the Boston Marathon, New York City Marathon, and Chicago Marathon.
But over the past three years, her life has become defined not only by running, but by cancer.
A New Hampshire kid with New York dreams
Long before the podcast and marathon broadcasts, Feller had another dream entirely.
“My goal from when I was a teenager was to move to New York City to work in the magazine industry,” she said.
After graduating from Quinnipiac University with a degree in print journalism, she landed exactly where she wanted to be: working for Dance Spirit magazine.
“I blame Andy Anderson, The Devil Wears Prada, all the things that made working in magazines look very, very fun,” she joked.
At the same time, she was slowly becoming immersed in New York’s running culture — logging miles through Central Park, along the East River and through neighborhoods she was still learning to navigate.
“It was such a good way for me to learn New York City,” she said. “I would just explore the city by foot.”
Eventually, she signed up for her first race: a four-mile run in Central Park.
“I was hooked,” she said.
Building a podcast one email at a time
Feller initially launched her podcast in 2017 as a way to stay connected to the running community after moving from Manhattan to New Jersey.
At the time, she had already been blogging for years through her site “Ali on the Run.” The podcast, though, was different.
“The blog was about my personal running,” she said. “Whereas the podcast … I wanted to tell other people’s stories, and I didn’t want it to be about me.”
What started as a hobby quickly snowballed.
Feller began emailing professional runners and asking them to come on the show. One interview led to another. Eventually, she built relationships across the sport.
“It’s always just been asking,” she said. “If you don’t ask, you can’t get a yes.”
Those yeses led to opportunities far beyond podcasting.
In 2019, while still living near New York City, Feller reached out to New York Road Runners about race announcements for the group.
They gave her a shot at a small 5K.
Later that year, she announced at the finish line of the New York City Marathon.
“Once you have New York City Marathon on your resume, sort of in any capacity, it’s a good thing,” she said.
After moving back to New Hampshire during the pandemic, she started announcing races for Millennium Running before eventually joining the Boston Marathon broadcast team.
Her first live television role happened almost by accident.
