Andrea Aguilar-Codina Has A Date With Running. You Might Have Noticed.

Andrea Aguilar-Codina never intended to fall in love with running, but she needed a way to cope after a breakup.

It all started back in 2022. Late one night, unable to fight away thoughts of sadness, she grabbed a pair of shoes and headed out the door. It was 4 a.m.  

Back then, she had no sense of time—at least when it came to running. How long was long? Maybe that was an hour. Maybe it was two, three or four. Either way, it didn’t matter. She wound up covering 10 miles and saw the sun rise for the first time on her feet, those pattering of steps the only sound beneath her. “I think once you experience that once or twice, you really can’t forget about it,” she said. “It became addicting.” 

Next up a few years later came a night out on Austin’s Sixth Street celebrating her 21st birthday. Aguilar-Codina consumed her first legal drink—a vodka soda. Upon arriving at home, she remembered a forgotten task. It was 2 a.m. and she had a run to do. 

“I told myself, ‘If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it,’” she said. 

On, she went … for 21 miles. 

What those stories reflect is a small morsel of Aguilar-Codina’s DNA. Her Python code is moments. They inspire her to feel, to dream, and to share. 

She would have never imagined it when she ran those first miles after a break up that she would become a long distance runner (no less a good one), but now here she is, the finisher of six marathons, and someone who’s on the cusp of her first Boston Marathon appearance on April 20. 

What’s more, Aguilar-Codina is an open book, too. She’s what you would call a micro-influencer—someone who doesn’t exactly hold a massive social media audience, but sparks large swaths of engagement through highly-relatable posts. During South by Southwest, JBL hired her for her first gig, a $1,500 social spot touting their ear buds. “That was really nice,” she said. 

She’s just shy of 6,000 followers on Instagram and a little less than 7,000 on Tik Tok. But on Tik Tok, she’s racked up 2.3 million likes, and on both networks she’s created millions of hours worth of views on posts. 

“I think now, looking back, I like thinking about that moment,” she said of her viral post on Tik Tok that hit 1.2 million views. “I went out for whatever I was capable of at that moment. I started and didn’t know anything, so I didn’t have any preassumptions about it.” 

Behind Andrea Aguilar-Codina’s Emergence 

Aguilar-Codina arrived in Austin in 2022 from Conroe, Texas with an idea of a plan but not quite sure how to get there. She aspired to attend The University of Texas, but began her college experience at Austin Community College.

She jumped into a relationship. That didn’t work. So she found running. Next came her ticket to the University of Texas. 

Now she’s just weeks shy of graduation with a degree in economics and a job lined up with Apple. Things tend to happen fast with Aguilar-Codina, who is now 22. “Doing that?” she says. “I told myself, ‘Anything is possible.’” 

Beyond school, running has taken a firm place outside of it. People around campus, including those who follow her on social media, often pigeonhole her as “that girl that likes to run a lot,” she says. Her posts are short, catchy, with little paragraphs of small text. It appeals mostly to the girlies. A lot of it is about running. Some of it is about relationships. When she connects the two, those usually do best. 

That’s sort of what she’s become. A person who posts about running. She named her Tik Tok account “Andrea Runs Sometimes,” after all. As her accounts have grown, she imagined that it would become her identity. 

Andrea Aguilar-Codina is going to compete at the Boston Marathon in 2026. Photo Credit: Cory Mull/Austin Fit Magazine

Dominating On The Roads

But on the roads, she’s actually starting to become a legitimately fast runner, too.

On December 7, she ran the Decker Challenge Half Marathon in Austin—a rather hilly course full of elevation—and surprised herself, winning in 1 hour and 32 minutes. The very next weekend, she clocked her fastest marathon in College Station, registering a time of 3 hours and 45 seconds, good enough for second overall. The time also qualified her for Boston (the women’s qualifying standard is 3:25). 

Most runners wouldn’t compete on back-to-back weekends at high intensity. But Aguilar-Codina, who ran about 80 mile weeks at her highest, honestly doesn’t even think about that. “All my runs are easy runs,” she said.

She doesn’t do workouts. She is barely competitive. “What Decker showed me is that there is nothing I can’t achieve as long as I put my mind to it,” she said. But she definitely runs a lot. It’s like her favorite thing to do, actually. 

All of that was leading upward until December, when she was faced with her first setback. In Dubai spending time with her family over the holiday, she was in a dune buggy when a car swerved into its path and threw her from her seat. The impact knocked Aguilar-Codina’s off the four-wheeler and left her with a stress fracture. 

She came back to the states and was placed in a boot. “I had never been injured,” Aguilar-Codina said. “I was really starting to think about my running career and all the races I wanted to do. I signed up for the Austin Marathon. I got my schedule for Boston. I didn’t know what that meant for me. I was really anxious.” 

Figuring Out Life Without Running

Turns out, life in the boot wasn’t all that bad. Aguilar-Codina sulked for a bit, then she realized she could just start doing stuff again.

She went to the gym in her boot and a four-wheel knee-walker and started working out. She posted about it on Instagram: “WEEKEND WORKOUTS after getting hit by a car.” She started doing that a lot. One time, she ran into Texas quarterback Arch Manning, who was also in a boot, and that post racked up 542,000. 

Eight weeks went by before she was out of it. 

But can you guess the first thing she did once her foot was free? 

A day before the Austin Marathon on February 15, Aguilar-Codina decided that because she couldn’t run the race she would instead walk it. All 26.2 miles of it. The exact course.

“It took me nine hours,” she said. 

Soon enough, she was running again. But with her birthday approaching in March, she wasn’t quite sure she was ready for “22 for 22,” which would have been the next phase of her journey on social media. Instead, she decided to throw a party at a running club. She invited about 60 of her friends and distributed little pink hats. The group ran a 5K with her, filming as they went. 

Then, after it was all finished, they celebrated where the ran began – at Comedor, a high-end Mexican restaurant run by Philip Speer (also a big runner). 

Naturally, Aguilar-Codina posted about it. It earned 2.3 million views. 

Andrea Aguilar-Codina at her 22nd birthday party. Photo Credit: Aguilar-Codina Instagram

What Inspires Andrea Aguilar-Codina

All of this begs the question? Why, any of it?

Why 21 miles on her birthday? Why all these marathons? Why walk 26 miles for nine hours? She’s got the Boston Marathon coming up in a few days. The race is holy ground to marathoners, a true runner’s race—one you must qualify for, and respect. 

Aguilar-Codina knows all of that. 

But at the end of the day, it’s also just running, too. She loves every moment of it. It’s the first thing she does sometimes when she wakes up. And it’s also the last thing she might do before she heads to bed. 

“It’s just me getting out there,” she said. “If I’m going through any situation, it’s just an outlet for me to get my energy out.” 

What To Know

The 130th running of the Boston Marathon will take place on Monday, April 20th. The point-to-point marathon, considered one of the world’s most-coveted race entries, begins in Hopkinton and ends in Downtown Boston. The race is one of the six World Marathon Majors and over its history has showcased some of the best in global running. At Austin Fit Magazine, we’ll aim to recap our Austin finishers and detail any other news and nuggets from the day on social media.