Stop drinking water in days leading up to a marathon. High-five all the kids you pass on the route. Break in a pair of fresh kicks.

Heather Mayer Irvine was scrolling through Twitter one day in October 2015, tweeting out some of her #Worst262Tips—bad advice she had been given before running a marathon—when Runner’s World magazine picked up her hashtag. About 140 characters later, she was hired.

“It was my dream job,” Mayer Irvine said, “and I think just sticking to my guns and knowing that’s what I wanted to do helped make things happen.”

Mayer Irvine (‘09) served as the food and nutrition editor at Runner’s World for nearly two and a half years. This October, she released her first cookbook: “The Runner’s World Vegetarian Cookbook.”

In the 10 years since she said goodbye to The D.O., Mayer Irvine has specialized in healthcare, fitness and nutrition reporting for a variety of magazine publications, including Time Inc., Discover Magazine, Glamour and Runner’s World, among others. Her passion for health was instilled in her during high school, where she joined her school’s cross country team.

During her time at SU, she studied newspaper and online journalism with a double minor in Spanish and nutrition. Despite her STEM-based minor not being the most conventional journalism concentration, she credits that decision with the success she’s achieved in the years since.

“I remember my dad saying to me, ‘Nutrition? If you’re going to be a journalist, you should study political science or history,’” Mayer Irvine said. “And I was like, ‘But I don’t want to write about those things.’”

While  at The D.O., she served as an assistant copy editor in Pulp and head copy chief. As a senior, she wrote the health and nutrition column, exploring topics ranging from New Year’s resolutions to the Gardasil vaccination.

It was thanks to her experience on the cross country course and time spent pouring over nutrition science textbooks, that not only opened her to a burgeoning area in the journalism industry, but to finding her niche in its respective communities. Her focus paid off — and helped her make a name for herself.

“And that, on a personal level, feels really empowering,” she said.

Taking risks and paying it forward are the two essential components to making yourself stick out within the ever-changing journalism industry, she added. Her decision to tweet her dream publication got her foot in the door. But she believes it was her ambition and her editor’s belief in her abilities that got her a seat at the table.

“You can do it. You can make a name for yourself,” she said.

That isn’t the only piece of advice she’d give her former self. “Lay off the PUP food — you don’t need to eat that much,” she added, laughing.

Published on December 17, 2018 at 11:01 am

Contact Kelsey: katho101@syr.edu | @writtenbykelsey