The Woman Guiding the World's Greatest Races: 10 Lessons from Dawna Stone

Dawna's opening candor set the tone for everything that followed. She said no to this job twice before saying yes. The travel — which she assumed would be the hardest part — turned out to be the thing she loves most. And what she thought would be manageable quickly became relentless. But she still pinches herself.

That combination — loving something hard — is the psychological profile of the best leaders in our industry. They're not here because it's easy. They're here because the mission is worth the difficulty.

The Abbott World Marathon Majors began as an elite athlete organization — about supporting the fastest runners, clean sport, and competitive excellence. Tokyo joined in 2013. Abbott came on as title sponsor. And then something shifted: the six star journey became as meaningful — maybe more meaningful — to the everyday runner than to the elite.

Dawna was hired not for her elite athlete expertise but for her community-building background. Her mission from day one: bring more people into the sport, grow the brand of the six star journey, and make the Majors something the everyday runner feels belongs to them.

Dawna was emphatic about this: the criteria for Major candidacy don't change. Not from year to year. Not for anyone. Pass stage one, then pass stage two — to the same standard. And even existing Majors are monitored to ensure they continue to meet the criteria. The bar doesn't lower once you're in.

This consistency of standards is what makes the Major label mean something. Any brand that lets the bar shift loses the meaning of the credential it's created.

London opened its ballot the day before the 2025 race — and over a million runners applied in one day. The demand is extraordinary. And Dawna acknowledged what that means for the runner who desperately wants in: it's discouraging. But she refuses to let discouragement become the end of the story.

She also made the point that the challenge of getting in is part of what makes the achievement meaningful. If it were easy, everyone would do it. The difficulty is the point.

For years, the running industry worried about the aging out problem — what happens when the 50s and 60s runners who built this sport can no longer run? Dawna is watching that fear become irrelevant in real time. For the first time in a long time, the average age of marathon participants is trending younger.

Her 17-year-old daughter told her she was going to the gym "for her mental health." A sentence Dawna would never have said to her parents. That generational shift in how young people relate to fitness and running is the most exciting structural change happening in our sport right now.

Dawna is clear-eyed about what running does for mental health — and equally clear that the conversation has only recently become socially acceptable. Studies now show that running is as effective as medication for depression and anxiety. The knowledge is out there. The stigma is dropping. And our industry needs to lean into that shift more aggressively than ever.

She frames it powerfully: when you challenge yourself to do something beyond your comfort zone and achieve it — the confidence you earn internally is something no other form of fitness replicates at the same scale. And a marathon, by definition, is as far outside the comfort zone as most people ever go.

Dawna wore an Abbott FreeStyle Libre continuous glucose monitor — not as a diabetic, but as a healthy athlete trying to understand how her body responds to nutrition. What she discovered was genuinely surprising: eating the same foods in a different order produced dramatically different glucose responses. Protein before carbs versus carbs before protein — not the same result at all. For her, the sequencing mattered more than the content.

This is the personalization revolution — and it's coming to running training too. The wearable of tomorrow won't just track your pace. It will tell you whether to run tomorrow based on what it knows about your body today.

When asked what she looks for in a city when considering Major candidacy — beyond the 104 criteria — Dawna gave a one-sentence answer that every race director should tape to their wall.

The race is the reason. But the city is the story. And the story is what people tell their friends when they get home and convince them to start their own six star journey.

Dawna described a dynamic that operates quietly but powerfully within the Abbott World Marathon Majors: the races watch each other closely, learn from each other, and compete — not for runners, but for standards. When one Major introduces something new and it works, the others notice. When something fails, that knowledge travels fast too.

She also described how the Majors bring other race directors in behind the scenes — not just to show off, but to genuinely share and learn. The best ideas don't stay inside the circle. They get shared, adapted, and improved by every race that touches them.

When asked what one piece of advice she'd share with every race organizer listening — from a 5K to a 50,000-person major — Dawna's answer was the same thing she'd heard from Mike Nishi, from Hugh Brasher, from Clark Gardner, from Chris Robb. It always comes back to this.

The instinct to protect what you know — to keep your playbook close — is understandable. It's also wrong. The rising tide lifts every boat in our sport. The best thing you can do for your race is to help every race around you get better.