Meridia Mondays | Issue 46
What does "Athlete Artist" mean to us?
Happy Monday, Meridians!
We have a fun one for you this week. Colleen just got back from a trip down to Alamosa where she was spending some time with Gracie, while Courtney and Annie have been holding it down in Boulder — training, creating, reading, and probably doodling on something.
This week, we want to talk about something unique to Meridia since the very beginning, even before we had the words for it: what it means to be an Athlete Artist.
And yes, we’re also going to talk about Courtney’s incredibly cool retreat coming up.
The Expectation
There’s a version of an athlete that the world has decided on. You eat, you train, you sleep, you recover, you think about training, you train some more. Rinse and repeat. The assumption is that if you’re serious about your sport, there’s no room for anything else — no hobbies, no crafts, no creative pursuits. Just being an athlete.
And most people do not realize, but creativity shows up in running every single day, whether you’re looking for it or not.
The weather shifts, and you have to rework the workout plan. Your foot starts nagging mid-workout, and you have to figure out what you can do instead of what you can’t. You’re tired, it’s dark, and you have to find a reason to train anyway. That kind of mental flexibility and problem-solving is creativity. We just don’t often recognize it or call it that. Athletes are some of the most creative people on the planet, however they often don’t even realize it or give themselves credit for it.
Built Out of Constraints
Meridia did not start like a typical pro running team. There was no head coach. No shoe sponsor. No roadmap.
What there was: a passionate runner with a desire to be free, creative, and genuinely have fun in the world of racing.
When you don’t have a blueprint, you build your own. When you don’t have a budget, you get resourceful. The Meridia merch store is a perfect example; it didn’t come from a brand deal or a budget for inventory. It came from the complete absence of both. So we got creative, got crafty, and figured out how to create from items that already exist in the world and result was completely unique products that we are genuinely excited about sharing. We make everything in-house using a Cricut machine, a skill none of us had before we started. We learned it together, and now it’s one of our favorite ways to get crafty together.
“Constraints don’t limit creativity. They ignite it.” - Colleen Quigley
What is an “Athlete Artist”?
Merriam-Webster defines an athlete as a person trained or skilled in exercises, sports, or games requiring physical strength, agility, or stamina. An artist is a person who creates art using conscious skill and creative imagination.
At Meridia, we are both.
The term “Athlete Artist” has a fun origin story. Colleen will be the first to admit she was self-conscious about this idea at first. As a professional runner, she felt pressure to fit the mold, to look and act the part of what a pro athlete is “supposed” to be. But she never fully identified with that, resulting in her doing her own thing. While Colleen was on the Bowerman Track Club, she always had side quests going, even when that was heavily discouraged by the culture of that team.
When she started Meridia, she brought in a creative team called Eat to help build the look and feel of the brand. She sat down with them, talked through her vision, and somewhere in that conversation, the phrase Athlete Artist was born. When she heard it said back to her, all the pieces fell into place; it was no longer an idea or a tagline, but rather a term. It was the most accurate description of who she actually was. Always believing deeply in the power of storytelling as its own creative skill, having the ability to connect with people through words, narrative, and through sharing something real - her own stories.
This idea eventually drew Courtney to the team. The athlete-artist identity was a big part of why she wanted to join this team and was excited to see other professional athletes embracing the idea of an athlete who is also creative.
The Team as Artists
Courtney doodles on everything (even her IG posts). Her art isn’t something she does on the side; it’s an important part of how she moves through the world and how she expresses herself. This October, she’s co-hosting Inner Terrain — a hybrid running retreat and art camp in Idaho Springs, Colorado. More details below.
Annie is a reader, reading a few dozen books each year. She started the Book Dumb Book Club where she picks a book to read every month and then has “dumb takes” on it.
Gracie is an entrepreneur through and through. One of her favorite things to do is sift through a thrift store looking for hiden gems. She’s been thrifting and reselling Y2K clothing on Depop for five years and runs a monthly coffee subscription- The Monthly Grind.
Colleen has been knitting since she was ten years old. She quilts, she sews, and she recently picked up embroidery floss just because it seemed fun. She made a quilt for her 90-year-old grandma recently and is currently knitting baby booties for her niece, who’s on the way. She’s fully in her “cottage core” era, as she would say.
Each team member has their own niche, and they’re all open to trying each other’s and new ones.
Beyond the Aesthetic
Running can take everything from you if you let it. A bad race, a brutal injury, a season that completely falls apart — if your entire identity lives inside your sport, those moments don’t just hurt. They can completely unmoor you and make you feel lost.
Having a small something else gives you ground to stand on when the sport is tough. It doesn’t have to be a business or a decade-long craft. It can be a book club, a Depop shop, a sketchbook, or a knitting project. Just something that’s yours. Something that reminds you that you are more than your last race, more than your PR, more than your injury report.
At Meridia, we believe creativity isn’t a distraction from being an athlete. It’s what keeps you whole.
Inner Terrain
For most of her life, Courtney called herself an athlete. That identity carried her through more miles, more early mornings, and more hard moments than she can count. But somewhere along the way, the other part of her — the part that wanted to make things, to create, to express — went quiet. And, she let it. She’s not entirely sure when it happened, only knowing that at some point she stopped reaching for it. And she began to crave it again.
That feeling is exactly where Inner Terrain was born.
Courtney and her collaborator Emma started talking because they both recognized something hard to name but easy to feel: the gap between calling yourself an athlete and calling yourself an artist. The runner who feels something stirring on a long trail run but doesn’t know how to express it. The artist who feels most alive when her body is moving, but has never had language for that. Anyone who has sensed that creativity and movement aren’t separate things — that they feed each other — but hasn’t had a place to actually explore what that means.
They didn’t want to collapse that gap or pretend it doesn’t exist. They wanted to honor it. To tend to it. To build something around the belief that both belong together — and that there’s something waiting in the space between them.
Emma brings the creative grounding. Courtney brings the years of knowing what it means to push a body and trust a process. Together, they built something they both wished had existed for them.
A weekend in October. Idaho Springs, Colorado. For athletes, artists, and everyone in between — to come and simply be both.
If any part of this newsletter resonated with you today, Inner Terrain might be exactly what you didn’t know you needed. Over the course of the weekend, you’ll get the change to participate in activities as well as conversations that honor both the athlete and the artist within, helping you discover what emerges when you stop treating them as separate.
“I’m not fully arrived. But I’m no longer letting that part of me go quiet. And I’d love for you to come find out what’s waiting in your own inner terrain.”
-Courtney Coppinger
Meridia Mentors (Session II)
In January we launched our mentorship program for collegiate athletes looking to go pro after school. This is an important endeavor to us because in our sport there is not a draft or formal process to “go pro.” So it’s up to the athletes to get information and figure it out for themselves. It’s also an individual sport, so there’s a lot of different ways to go about setting yourself up for success in the sport. We don’t have all the answers, but we are eager to share what we have learned and support these athletes as they take the next steps in their careers. If you or someone in your circle is in the NCAA right now and is looking for guidance, information, and support around the process of going pro in running, click here and fill out your information.
Our second session will be this Sunday, May 17th and you don’t have to have attended the first session to attend session 2.
Thank you for reading! If you are enjoying following along with our team and know of anyone else who might also enjoy this type of storytelling, be sure to share this newsletter with them using the button below.
This week’s episode was written by our new summer intern, Lacey Daniell! We are so grateful for her support in telling our stories and excited to have her as part of our team this summer.
And if you’ve missed any of our previous issues, you can catch up here.
See you next Monday!
Team Meridia
Annie, Colleen, Gracie, and Courtney
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