Saturday Spotlight Name:
Kate Bongiorno
Age: 44Marital status: single
Pets: 1 cat Molly
Occupation: Bartender at season’s 52 in Garden city
Hobbies: running, yoga, reading and traveling
Hometown: Long island
Current town: Bellmore, NY
Favorite Race: NYC marathon
Hi everyone. Thank you Lou LaFleur for asking me to be the warrior of the week. I’m social media shy so i don’t post often, but i really enjoy reading everyone else’s wotw so I’m excited for my turn. I grew up here on long island. I moved around a lot, which is why i don’t really have a ‘hometown ‘.
I’m not sure how many towns I’ve lived in but I went to 6 different schools. I have 2 younger sisters, Char Lotte who many of you know and Maggie who lives in MD now. We’re each 1 year apart, so we’re super close but we also fight constantly. It’s really fun. We go on a sister trip every year. Our trip this year was unfortunately canceled. We were supposed to go to the Galapagos islands last week. I was hoping my ‘memorable monday’ would include pictures of giant tortoises. I went to SUNY Oneonta, where I earned a BA In psychology.
From what i can remember i had a great time. After school, i moved to Colorado for a year. I had some friends move there and i wanted to try somewhere new. I first lived in Denver, which was great and then Boulder, which i didn’t care for. When i came back i got a job in social work, but i was really unhappy there. At the time i was also bar tending part time to pay my bills. After about 2 years, i left my terrible job and worked in the restaurant full time instead. Which is what I’ve been doing ever since. For the past 7 years I’ve been working in a nice corporate restaurant in garden city.
So running..I was always an active person. I played some sports and i loved biking and doing the obstacle course races. But i really hated running. Charlotte would try to get me to run but it usually didn’t go well . Then in 2016 she said she was entering the lottery for the nyc marathon. Well i hate being left out more than i hate running, so I entered too. I was really hoping we didn’t get in but of course we did. While training i fell in love with running and i would wake up looking forward to my runs. Marathon day was incredible and now running has taken over my life. In Dec ’18 my beautiful friend Caro Lyn suggested we do a NYE with the selden hills people and now here i am. I’m so glad we did. I love the challenge of the course but really I’m so grateful for the positive supportive people I get to run with. Especially Kathleen Bates Sparacin, my favorite to run the hills with and also try the longer courses and Stephanie Abrams Templeton, my robs run teammate who i love running and discussing travel with.
I hope everyone’s safe and healthy. I look forward to sharing more with you all this week.