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In honor of PRIDE Month, we are sharing LGBTQIA+ athlete stories, education on Allyship within sport, and amplifying the voices of our Hive community.
Brian is a Honey Stinger Ambassador, and one of the faces behind our TikTok feed. As both a runner and coach, Brian creates fun, helpful nutrition and fitness content.
Brian is the founder of Great Day for Runners (@greatdayforrunners) which aims to inspire freedom, fulfillment, and desire for uncharted territory through the love of running. He recently launched his first two apparel pieces - buttery soft, moisture-wicking and pro-LGBTQ shirts.
As a kid, I showed promise in every sport, including soccer, football, and basketball, but the toxic masculine culture that surrounded sports pushed me out around high school. In a classic "boys will be boys" fashion, I was constantly bullied for being "different". Shortly after that, my freshman year of high school, I came out as gay at the age of fourteen. I stopped sports altogether for a few years until my senior year, when I learned that the boys and girls all practiced together on the swim team. I joined with some friends and found my love of competition and athletics again.
My freshman year of college, a friend convinced me to go on a short run with her, and from that day I was hooked. As I got more into running, it fulfilled a desire of both pushing myself physically and mentally, and it gave me the space to be with myself, process my thoughts, and feel comfortable in my own body. With miles of open road and hours to find clarity and inspiration, it was the first place I felt like I could truly be me. Not only did it give me the opportunity to learn more about who I was, but it gave me confidence to be the person that I am. With every additional mile, I proved to myself that I was improving and that I was worthy of happiness. No matter what the world tried to convince me, running taught me that I was enough.
I ran my first marathon as a junior in college, and as I began to improve and drop time in the marathon, people started asking me for running advice. Years later, during the early weeks of the pandemic, so many people were asking me for help in running that I started officially coaching. I launched my coaching business, now Great Day for Runners, in April 2021, and have since taken on many different types of adult athletes, from newby runners to Boston qualifiers.
As I began coaching more and more, I noticed the benefits for both queer and cis/straight athletes of coaching from a place of love, acceptance, and happiness. It became my coaching philosophy that the point of running is to improve your life. Today, I focus on using the sport as a tool for self improvement and a safe space for practicing valuable life skills, many of which are more difficult to come by as a queer person.
I realized that when you make the running space "a little more gay", you create room for all people to have fun, express themselves, and become the best version of themselves. I decided to launch the Great Day for Runners apparel business to increase visibility of queer people and to give queer runners what they have always deserved -- apparel that reflects their style and values. With the apparel business, I hope to scale it far beyond my capacity for coaching individuals and finally have more queer voices helping to shift culture in the running community. Long gone are the days of a hyper-masculine ethos dictating what athletes should look like or how they should act. Great Day believes that, wherever you are on your running journey, love and joy are the most effective way to reach your personal best.
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