Running in Purple

For Juliana LoRicco, running was never really about the miles. It was about a feeling, and a grandmother she refuses to forget.

Juliana grew up in Connecticut, in the kind of suburban town where the hills go on forever. Rolling, relentless, climbing before you have finished waking up. Back then, those hills meant nothing to her in particular. She was a tennis player, competitive and focused, the kind of kid who always needed to move, who was always chasing something. The hills were just the landscape. Just the place she happened to grow up in.

She had plans. Law school had always been on the horizon, the kind of goal that felt both distant and inevitable. And family was always at the center of it.

For Juliana, family has never been background. It has always been the whole point. Her mother, her sister, her grandmother — the women who shaped her, who showed her what strength looks like, what devotion looks like, what it means to love someone through the hardest possible circumstances.

Her grandmother was one of the strongest women she had ever known. And when Juliana was still in elementary school, her grandmother was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease.

She watched it happen with young eyes. The illness doing what it does — slowly, without mercy, without remorse — stripping away the best parts of the woman her family had built their lives around. She watched her mother give everything she had to make those final years as full and as dignified as possible. She watched Alzheimer's take what it wanted anyway.

That is the ground beneath everything Juliana has built since.

The Feeling

In the fall of 2020, she was a freshman at college in Boston, and the world had closed. Everything was shut down. She was homesick, isolated, confined to a dorm room in a city that hadn't yet become hers.

She went for a run.

It was not a plan. It was not a training block or a race goal. It was simply the only thing that made sense on a day when nothing else did. She ran through Boston's streets, quiet now in a way they had never been before, and something happened to her that she is still chasing today.

“Running became a mental and physical release that made me feel something no other form of exercise ever had. I think that feeling is what keeps me coming back year after year.”

She still cannot fully explain that feeling. She only knows she has been chasing it ever since. And she began to notice something else, too: those hills back home in Connecticut, the same ones she had grown up ignoring, were starting to mean something. Every climb was an answer. Every descent a breath. The landscape she had always taken for granted was becoming the training ground she never knew she needed.

Running in Purple

In 2024, Juliana ran her first marathon — the TCS New York City Marathon, 26.2 miles through all five boroughs, from the Verrazzano Bridge in Staten Island to the finish line in Central Park. She ran it wearing purple, for the Alzheimer's Association, for her family, for her grandmother.

To this day, she still calls it the best day of her life.

The morning after the race, she signed up for Chicago. She ran Chicago in 2025, purple again, carrying the same quiet dedication through 26.2 more miles. And on November 1, 2026, she will return to New York City for the third time, decked out in purple, raising funds and awareness for a disease she has watched up close, whose face she knows, that she refuses to stop fighting.

“Running and raising awareness for this relentless disease has not only affected my family, but I know affects so many more.”

The marathon is how she fights back. Mile by mile, city by city, year after year.

When two family friends decided to sign up for a Half Ironman, they asked if she was coming. She said yes before she had thought it through.

People told her it wasn't a good idea. First year of law school, they said. The hardest year. Not the time to also be preparing for 1.2 miles of swimming, 56 miles on a bike, and a half marathon to close it out — especially starting from scratch in the water and on two wheels.

She trained for approximately 86 days. A friend loaned her a bike. Others showed up consistently, meeting her exactly where she was, making the impossible feel possible. And she did it the same way she does everything: competing only against herself, setting her own bar, never measuring her progress against anyone else's timeline.

On race day, she had one goal: to smile the entire time.

She did. Climbing every hill on the bike, talking to anyone who passed her or whom she passed. Encouraging every woman she saw on the course. Genuinely, completely present in every mile. The doubts came on the run — they always do — and when they did, she thought of something a friend had told her about his own Ironman training: that he was doing it to redefine what hard means for himself. She held that idea close and kept moving forward.

“It wasn't just about getting through the race. It was about proving to myself that I could push past that doubt and redefine what I'm capable of.”

The Balance That Makes No Sense Until It Does

This year, Juliana completed six races while finishing her second semester of law school.

People assume one of those things must suffer. The training, or the studying. The body, or the mind. What she has found instead is that each one makes her better at the other. Training forces her to be intentional with every hour she has. The discipline of the early morning run carries directly into the discipline of the afternoon in the library.

Some nights she doesn't get her full eight hours. A social commitment runs late, the evening gets away from her. She gets up the next morning and goes for the run anyway. Not because she has to. Because that is simply who she is.

Discipline, for Juliana, isn't something she waits to feel. It's something she chooses every morning. She doesn't compare herself to other athletes training for the same events. She doesn't track their times or follow their methods. The only competition she has ever been interested in is the one she runs against herself — setting her own bar and going after it, quietly, consistently, without fanfare.

“Both pursuits push me in different ways, but together they've made me more focused, disciplined, and confident in my ability to handle demanding environments. I am not doing any of this because I thought it would be easy.”

Connecticut: Where She Built Her Engine

Connecticut is where Juliana built her engine. The hilly suburbs she grew up in offer endless rolling hills, quiet country roads, and constant elevation changes that make every run and every ride a workout before you even realize it. There are almost no sidewalks — training happens on the road, in all weather, up gradients that never apologize. It is the kind of terrain that rewards patience, consistency, and resilience. The same hills that once meant nothing to her have quietly shaped the athlete she has become.

Twenty minutes away, everything changes. Drive toward the Long Island Sound and the land flattens into coastal roads, salt air, and the kind of quiet that only exists near water. Two completely different training worlds within a short drive of each other — rolling inland hills for building strength, flat coastal routes for speed and recovery.

For a traveling athlete, Connecticut offers both. The challenge of the hills and the relief of the coast, all within reach of the same afternoon.

The Dream: Gold Coast, With Her Sister

If she could train anywhere in the world, she would choose the Gold Coast of Australia.

For endurance athletes, the Gold Coast is one of those rare places that seems purpose-built for training. Flat coastal roads, open-water swimming, year-round sunshine, and a thriving triathlon culture have made it a destination for athletes from around the world. The Gold Coast Oceanway runs for 36 kilometers along the waterfront, past stretches of beach, surf clubs, and coastal promenades. Just minutes inland, the landscape shifts dramatically into hinterland — volcanoes, rainforest, and national parkland. Two entirely different worlds, side by side.

It is exactly the kind of place where you could swim in the Pacific at sunrise, ride flat coastal roads through the morning, and run along the waterfront as the day cools. The Gold Coast has hosted world-class triathlon events, including the Commonwealth Games, and attracts athletes from across the globe to train on its fast, flat courses.

She would want her sister there with her. Her sister hasn't gotten on a bike or into a pool yet. But Juliana has a feeling Australia might be the thing that finally convinces her.

Some goals take time. She knows that better than anyone.

What She Would Tell You

“As we get older, we don't always give ourselves permission to be beginners.”

She has been a beginner. In a locked-down Boston dorm room with no plan. In a swimming pool with no technique. On a borrowed bike with no experience. At a starting line in New York City, wearing purple for someone she misses.

Every time, she showed up anyway.

“Finishing is an accomplishment in itself, but the lessons you gain along the way are what really stay with you.”

Berlin comes next.

Then New York once again.

Still wearing purple.

Still running for the Alzheimer's Association.

Still carrying her grandmother with every mile.

Juliana isn't chasing podiums. She isn't trying to outrun anyone else. She is simply becoming a little stronger, a little wiser, and a little more herself every time she crosses another finish line.

Because for her, the race has never ended at the finish line.

It begins there.

And as long as there are miles left to run, they'll be run in purple.

Follow Juliana on TikTok @julesloricco. Support her 2026 NYC Marathon campaign for the Alzheimer's Association at events.alz.org/fundraisers/julianaloricco/nyc-marathon.