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She has run marathons and triathlons and blogs about it. Now, she is the author of From Couch Potato to Endurance Athlete: A Portrait of a Non-Athletic Athlete. This woman is Hilary Topper.
Topper, 60, has been running marathons and triathlons for many years. All of that led her to writing not only her book, but her two blogs as well. She will soon be sharing her insight on September 14 when she comes to Barnes & Noble in the Smith Haven Mall for a book signing.
This author was born and raised in Long Beach, NY. At the beginning she did not start off as the athlete she came to be.
“When I was younger, I practically failed gym,” Topper said in her blog A Triathlete’s Dairy. “I hated exercise and I especially didn’t want to run track. I was one of those kids who always got picked last on the team. This discouraged me from any athletic activities for years following High School.”
Topper is currently employed as the CEO of HJMT Public Relations Inc. in Long Beach. She started this company in 1992 when her daughter was born. It became an award-winning public relations agency that is based in both Long Island and New York City. In addition, she is also an adjunct professor at Hofstra University teaching digital communications, persuasive public speaking and more.
She is the mother of two children and the CEO of her own company. Topper now currently resides in Merrick, NY. Despite the success, Topper felt like she needed to do something else in her life that was more healthy.
“I was about 48 and I was working all the time. I still have my own business,” Topper said. “I was starting to feel like I was getting heavy and I wasn’t doing anything healthy for myself. I had been raising my children and so I was working all the time and there was never any kind of me time.”
After that realization at 48, she joined a local gym and hired a personal trainer. Later she began running outside with a friend, which led her to racing and marathons. Since then, she ran the NYC Half Marathon, the Diva Half Marathon in Myrtle Beach, SC and the Disney 10-Mile Tower of Terror Race.
Topper has written two books in addition to this new one. In 2009, there was Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Social Media, but were afraid to ask...: Building Your Business Using Consumer Generated Media and then in 2019 she published Branding in a Digital World: How to Take an Integrated Marketing Approach to Building a Business.
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Her newly published book, released in August 2022, is about overcoming obstacles in anything from injury to business trouble. She talks about her experience as a runner and her time in the triathlon.
“It starts in the very beginning, you know, growing up in Long Beach and my mother being really nervous about me learning how to ride a bike,” she said. “She kept saying, ‘Don’t go too fast, don’t go too hard.’ So it starts there and it morphs into how I started to get into running and then eventually triathlons and in between all of that I had a lot of things that happened to me personally.”
Topper’s goal for her book is to help other people realize that life happens and bad things happen. But, with a positive attitude people can accomplish more. “No matter how bad things can get, you could refocus and see the beauty of things,” she said.
The event will take place in the Barnes & Noble bookstore at the Smith Haven Mall at 6:30 p.m. She will read an excerpt from the book, answer questions, and will sign copies. All attendees will receive a bookmark from Sumarpo, a 100 percent Eco-Friendly wetsuit company. Admission is free.
To read more about Hilary Topper, visit her blogs: A Triathlete’s Dairy and HilaryTopper.com. In addition, people can listen to her radio podcast called Hilary Topper on Air, where she interviews people who have done exceptional things in business and triathlons.
