27-01-2025
University of Texas alum crawling the Austin marathon to raise sexual assault awareness
Summer Willis hated to run. As a senior in high school in Beaumont, she quit soccer because "we were running so much, and it filled me with the most anxiety."
A year and a half ago, Willis, 30, who now lives in Houston, hit rock bottom after being diagnosed with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder following a sexual assault her sophomore year at the University of Texas.
Just three months from her 29th birthday, she decided she would run 29 marathons in a year to raise awareness about sexual assault.
Having completed those 29 marathons in a year by October, Willis is returning to the marathon circuit on Feb. 16 for the Austin Marathon.
This time, though, she'll be crawling the marathon. She'll start on the course at 8:00 the night before after being at a gala for Austin's SAFE Alliance, and crawl on her hands and knees with her husband, Andrew, staying beside her to make sure she doesn't get lost in the dark and is kept fed and hydrated.
She'll use knee pads and tape her wrists, but she knows it will be a grueling feat. She expects to reach the finish line around 1 p.m. and will be joined by friends and family, her therapist, as well as Texas legislators who are helping her spirit bills protecting victims of sexual assault.
Several bills, including Senate Bill 332 and House Bill 1714, would make it a sexual assault if the person "knows the other person is intoxicated by any substance such that the other person is incapable of appraising the nature of the act" or if the person "knows that the other person has withdrawn consent to the act and the actor persists in the act after consent is withdrawn."
Several bills, including Senate Bill 127 and House Bill 1778, would remove the statute of limitations on prosecuting sexual assault.
The idea to crawl came to Willis because recovery after a sexual assault is slow and painful, she said. "It felt like I was on hands and knees just trying to get by for years — trying to crawl back into the person that I used to be," she said.
"It's also right now a crawl to get anything done: to get legal help, to get the rape kits that you need to get, the counseling. ... It just all feels like this really slow process, but there's also strength in that. There's strength in the slow recovery."
Willis was inspired by another runner who had run 52 marathons in 52 weeks to raise money for pancreatic cancer research.
Willis had just had a baby, was sleep deprived and out of shape, she said, but she knew she could do it.
"I couldn't run a mile. I was overweight. I was depressed. but I had some running shoes, and I started training," she said.
She did three marathons in three days in Lake Tahoe that October as her first entry into the world of marathons. She later did 13 marathons in eight weeks.
Sometimes the marathons were just a mess. One time she forgot pants and had to have pants delivered to her through Uber, but the pants that arrived were almost see-through. Another time she forgot to pack deodorant. And for her first marathons, her luggage was lost, including her breast pump, which meant she could barely lift her arms while running because her breasts were so full with milk and no pump to express it.
Willis' healing was about getting stronger through running and through writing and talking about her assault, which she never reported.
"I needed to be the person that I used to believe that I could be before the rape, just someone who is strong and resilient and a fighter and someone who would do good," she said. "And so by running 29 marathons and sharing my story with the world, I guess that was me trying to be the person that I always believed I could be before."
Coming back to Austin is always difficult. When she was last here, she went by the street where her assault occurred and just cried.
She says she and a group of her sorority sisters went to a fraternity party where she was handed a drink. She believes that drink was laced with something because she has very little memory of that night. She does remember the bed and saying "no" over and over again.
Then she remembers running along the street outside the fraternity house, falling on the ground and then taking a hot shower afterward.
She later heard from people at the party what had happened to her, and she says the fraternity's underground newsletter published a narrative of that night's events, which included her rape, she said.
She didn't tell anyone what had happened to her for more than a year.
"Only 21% of people report that they were raped because it's humiliating and shameful," she said.
During one marathon, she ran through New York's Central Park with a twin mattress strapped to her back to point out that during college, women are three times more likely to be sexual assaulted during their college years than at ay other time.
The running has been therapeutic for Willis. "For a long time, for a decade, I just ran away from all the trauma, and this was my way of finally facing it head on," she said. "And then it turned into something way bigger than just myself."
When she runs, fellow survivors of sexual assault will run along side her and tell her their stories.
"At first that was really, really hard, because not only was I carrying my pain, I was carrying their pain," she said. "This is my way of turning pain into purpose and creating lasting change."
Even today, when she feels stressed or is having a bad day, she'll go for a run. It's become her way to heal.
She's created the nonprofit Strength through Strides and is working on creating a series of 5K races that will raise awareness about sexual assault and bring survivors and their loved ones together. She's also working an a film about sexual assault prevention and she is advocating for women to protect other women, especially during their college years.
It's the advice she gave her own younger sister when she arrived at UT. That means noticing when someone has had too much to drink and making sure they get home OK, or telling a someone to "get lost" if they see that person being inappropriate to another person.
She's also working on a national law to create a sexual assault victim's counselor at every college that receives federal funds.
Today, she has a lot of gratitude for her husband Andrew, who is her biggest supporter, for sons Alfred, 3, and August, 1, who love to run with her or play Pokémon Go.
"I don't even know if you ever can fully heal or recover," she said. "It is a crawl and it is an endurance race. I just want people to know that there's hope, and you can still have your happy ending. Although occasionally, I do feel sad and it was hard, I have my husband and my boys, and I'm so happy and blessed."
This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: UT graduate crawling Austin Marathon to raise sexual assault awareness
