Welcome – Coach Kate Gustafson
Dylan WykesWe are pumped to announce that Kate Gustafson is joining the M2M coaching crew! Kate is an amazing runner, coach, and woman. She’s inspired so many through her own running, coaching, and outreach with girls & woman across the globe. As M2M continues to grow in Vancouver and beyond, Kate will look to inspire more athletes and help them reach their goals. We feel truly lucky to have Kate join our crew of coaches. Kate’s full profile is below, and on our TEAM page, HERE.
Kate Gustafson is a writer, runner, and coach—with her truest passions being travel and supporting women & girls in sport.
As a former Women’s NCAA Division I Ice Hockey player (named captain in her senior season), Kate loves sweaty pursuits. She has completed the Everest Base Camp Trek in Nepal, spent six weeks training at high altitude in Kenya, climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, raced twelve marathons and is a proud Guinness world record holder for distance run on a treadmill by twelve women over twelve hours.
Her personal best times include 2:46:40 in the marathon and 1:18:43 in the half marathon, both achieved in 2017 while training under fellow coach, Dylan Wykes.
When her hockey-playing days came to an end she revisited her passion for running. Eleven years later, she has completed 75+ races and trained with many inspiring coaches and teammates along the way—with all of this hard work culminating in a top 25 finish at the 2015 Boston Marathon and a 26th place finish at the 2017 Berlin Marathon.
In 2013, Kate founded an online coaching business, and has since supported over 65 athletes across Canada in their various running pursuits. In 2014, she launched Girls With Gusto, a pilot running program for girls in Regent Park, one of Toronto’s most diverse neighbourhoods. And in 2015, she co-founded Run To Give YVR to bring Vancouver’s running community together to help the Downtown Eastside Women’s Centre.
Kate has led cross training clinics at the Toronto Raptors Basketball Academy, Toronto Maple Leafs Hockey School and Scotiabank Girls Hockey Fest, Ottawa Senators Hockey Camps, and led the Female Hockey Jamboree and Hometown Hockey clinics with the Vancouver Canucks.
She believes that perseverance, grit, and a profound love for sport are essential. She strives to pass this along to young girls through mentorship, endurance athletes through coaching, and fellow teammates through her own training.
After graduating from Union College in upstate New York, Kate began her professional career in advertising in Atlanta and Toronto before spending the next few years in non-profit leading a team. In 2012, she made the jump to professional sports at Maple Leaf Sports & Entertainment. In early 2015, Kate moved to Vancouver to write for lululemon. Kate also writes a blog; a project that started during a year spent travelling around the world.