Meridia Mondays | Issue 47

Coffee, Community, and Why Women’s Sports Is a Business

May 18, 2026

Happy Monday, Meridians!

It’s a rainy day in Boulder today and honestly… it’s kinda nice! We have had such a mild winter with so many sunny and warm days, which is great for us runners, but every once in a while it feels nice to cozy up during a gloomy, rainy day and sip a cup of coffee (*subtle foreshadowing*).

At the end of the week the weather is looking sunny and beautiful again just in time for our FIRST COMMUNITY EVENT!

On Saturday, May 23rd we are hosting a group run and pop-up coffee shop during BolderBoulder weekend. We’ve been wanting to do more in-person events and make connections with the local community here in Boulder. Gracie and her boyfriend, Romain Legendre, have been doing some pop-up coffee shops in Alamosa this spring, so this feels like the perfect opportunity to bring together two of our favorite things: RUNNING and COFFEE.

If you’re on Strava, you can RSVP to the event HERE, or just come out to Tom Watson on Saturday morning and grab a coffee and some miles! Keep an eye out on Instagram and Strava for any updates leading into the event.

A Passion for Coffee and Connection

Last week we highlighted Courtney’s latest side hustle, Inner Terrain, which is a weekend retreat that is a blend of creativity and running. This project is a business, but it’s also a passion of Courtney’s and a way to celebrate two sides of herself: as an athlete and as an artist.

This week we are talking about Gracie’s latest side hustle, The Monthly Grind. The Monthly Grind is a coffee subscription service for those of us who love drinking amazing coffee and are interested in exploring new beans and flavors that we can’t find at the grocery store.

Gracie started the company with her boyfriend, Romain Legendre, who is also a professional distance runner. Let us paint the picture for you…

Gracie is an oat milk latte addict. She loves thrift shopping, crafting her own clothes, and creating meaningful moments with the people she cares about. Romain is a double-espresso purist, endlessly dialing in the perfect shot while watching NBA highlights. His room feels more like a coffee shop than a bedroom, thanks to the constant flow of friends stopping by for “just one coffee.”

She’s American. He’s French. They met in college—and yes, their first date was, unsurprisingly, at a coffee shop.

Last Christmas, when Gracie was looking for a coffee subscription as a gift for Romain, she couldn’t find one that fit her criteria for amazing and unique coffee. That gap in the market sparked the idea to… make her own… get it? ‘We make our own’?!

And that’s how The Monthly Grind was born.

Subscribe here

The Art of the Side Hustle

This is what the side hustle is all about. Something you can do on the side that aligns with something you enjoy and hopefully can earn you some extra cash. As runners, we can only train so many hours of the day. A normal easy day for us might include an hour run in the morning and then another hour later in the day spent doing some kind of recovery or maybe a cross training session or a second run. That’s maybe 2 hours out of the day total. Of course, workout days are longer and more exhausting, but the point is that we have some free time.

If you don’t have a second job, you can spend that free time however you wish. Gracie is the queen of turning her passions into profit. Besides her love of coffee, Gracie is a thrifting legend. She has always loved sifting through racks and bins at thrift stores, looking for hidden gems. She turned this passion into a business a few years ago and now she has sold over 1,800 of her Y2K finds on Depop. This income came in especially handy when, as a professional runner, she found herself waiting many months for payments from sponsors and prize money from races.

We love celebrating our athletes as entrepreneurs and encourage you to check out The Monthly Grind for yourself if you or someone you love is a fan of amazing coffee.

Women’s Sports Is a Business

In conversations with media or on podcasts, we sometimes notice that people assume Meridia is a nonprofit or a charity. It’s hard to imagine that same assumption being made if we had started with a group of male athletes. While we are absolutely still in the beginning phases of building this team (we are about to celebrate our first birthday on June 4th), the goal is to create a ton of value so that we can work with major brands that we love and ultimately support our athletes financially.

Meridia is a business. We believe that athletes are incredibly valuable as sources of inspiration and motivation to millions of people. Professional athletes make great ambassadors for brands who are looking to get their message and product in front of consumers and built credibility in the market.

However, most athletes are focused on doing their actual job- training, recovery, competing, and kicking ass- and don’t spend as much time building themselves as a brand, packaging themselves as a product, marketing themselves, and curating their own stories in a digestible and consistent way.

That’s where the support system of a team comes in. Some bigger name athletes in bigger sports have whole teams of people around them doing PR, marketing, social media, philanthropy, etc. You don’t see that as much in track and field, but why not?

According to Sports Business Journal, women in track and field, golf, and weightlifting are generating the most interest from brands right now. Athlete marketing platform OpenSponsorship has brokered 9,000+ brand–athlete deals over the past decade, and in 2025, 75% went to female athletes.

At Meridia, we are thinking and dreaming big. The way we structured our team allows each athlete to have a ton of autonomy and independence in the way they set themselves up. Our athletes have the freedom to choose their own coach and to choose their main sponsor in the category of footwear and apparel. For example, Annie is sponsored by Salomon and works with Coach Juli Benson. Colleen is also coached by Julie Benson, but is sponsored by lululemon. Gracie works with Coach Damon Martin and is sponsored by Puma. Courtney works with Coach Matt Daniels and is sponsored by Brooks.

The goal for Meridia is to be able to create a product that is so compelling that we can successfully partner with “non-endemic” brands in categories like beauty, finance, tech, travel, wellness, etc. Having our fans engage with us online and cheer for us when we are competing is HUGELY helpful to our team and we are so grateful to everyone who has been in our corner this first year together. We are going even bigger and better in year two and can’t wait to have you along with us for the ride!

As far as charity work, there are a ton of amazing nonprofits out there doing great work to support things like youth athletics, and our athletes love pouring energy into organizations like Boulder Mountain Warriors and Girls on the Run. However, we believe that the biggest impact we can make for pro athletes through our organization is to shift the conversation away from women’s sports being a “charity” and towards being a profitable business.

Speaking of amazing nonprofits…

Wildwood Miles

At the end of this month, there’s going to be a super fun event at the Boulder High School Track inviting women and girls of all ages and abilities to race one of our favorite distances… the mile!

There will be lots of different heats all evening on May 30th, and your estimated finish time will determine which heat you’re placed in. We cannot emphasize this enough: ALL PACES AND AGES WELCOME!

There will be super speedy high schoolers ripping fast times, and there will be moms, maybe even grandmas, little girls, and college-aged women all running the distance in celebration of our bodies

Team Meridia will be there cheering and we are leading warmups in the infield during the event to help everyone get their bodies ready to run!

This is the first time this event will be hosted in Boulder, but the organization, Wildwood, has hosted it a few times in Portland. HERE is an incredible video of last year’s event in Portland so you can get an idea of the vibe.

This is your personal invitation to sign up and come run a mile with us! It’s gonna be a blast! Get a friend, daughter, mother, sister, auntie, or grandma to come with you! There’s gonna be some amazing giveaways and freebies from brands who are supporting this event.

See you there :)

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.

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