Check Out Dominique Bellamy’s Story

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dominique Bellamy.

Hi Dominique, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
Long story short, I grew up in Chicago, IL, playing basketball and baseball most of my life. I was average in both sports to be honest but mostly because I didn’t work hard at either sport. I was able to play college basketball at Grinnell College, but since it was Division 3, I knew there wasn’t a bright future in basketball. So graduating and getting a good job was my focus from there.

Fast forward a bit, I moved to Omaha, NE for my first job post grad where I studied to get my MBA and worked at a commercial auto insurance company. I later moved to LA because they had a small office in the Valley. After moving here, I started to take a few career risks. LA started to open my eyes that there’s more than just working a traditional 9-5. I started meeting people in so many different career fields. So I left my job to pursue wealth management as a financial advisor. After 2 years, I wasn’t making it. It’s basically a sales role and that wasn’t for me. And the pandemic began so I was surely not going to be successful selling virtually. Around this time of going into wealth management, I started running and everything changed.

I signed up for my first marathon in 2019, joined a run club, and posted about my running journey here and there. I became a captain for the run club and I started to post more to share the upcoming runs and about the races I had coming up. This helped me come out of my shell a little bit, getting creative with the posts I made, sharing more about myself. Through this, I became apart of other people’s running journeys. Whether that be helping them train for a race through the run club, or inspiring someone to run from my content. That wasn’t the initial goal but it became my passion to share the joy and love of running that I found.

I think how you treat running translates to how you perform in other aspects of life. One of the reasons I signed of for my first marathon was I was changing careers and I thought the discipline it would take me to training would translate over to my work life to be successful as a financial advisor. And although it didn’t pan out for that specific career, I did notice my work ethic and discipline carry other to other aspects of my life.

I started Sunday Runday LA in 2023 to be a welcoming and inviting space for people of all fitness levels, to be active and meet other people. I want people to be healthy and active, but also to have fun with it. So my content mainly reflects humor and fun within running, my personal journey of running, and the community of running in LA.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
It’s been mostly smooth, because at the end of the day, I’m being myself and doing what I want to do. However, there are struggles I face. I could list some struggles but I feel like you can overcome anything, so don’t dwell on it. At the end of the day, the day gonna end.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about your work and what you’re currently focused on?
In the past year, I began pursuing a career as a full time content creator. Transparently, I’m still figuring this part of my life out as I did it somewhat spontaneously given the opportunities that came my way. I also founded a run club, Sunday Runday LA. And I recently became a trainer at Nike Running Studios in Santa Monica.

I think what sets me apart is my journey from hating running to founding a club and actively participating in marathon running. I’ve run 19 marathons since 2019, I’ve led Sunday Runday LA for 3 years, I’ve partnered with several brands, and at the end of the day, if social media went away, I’d still run just as much. I think people can see my genuine passion for running and it translate in my content. I try to show the fun of it and highlight the community I’ve become apart of and love.

I’m most proud of being the start of some people’s running journeys. There are some who have gone on to run their first marathon or multiple marathons because they started running with us. And while we aren’t a full marathon training club per se, I’m just honored and proud to have impacted others and to be apart of their story.

Let’s talk about our city – what do you love? What do you not love?
There’s a lot to love about this city. The first things that come to mind are the weather and nature. Being from the mid west, I never saw mountains or desert. In LA, you are within an hour of so many different ecosystems that it’s beautiful to go exploring. Outside of those obvious things, I really like that nothing is too farfetched here. You don’t have to take the traditional path and that’s more accepted here than in other cities.

Although I’ve lived here for 10 years, I don’t think I can say things I like least since I’m not from LA. Otherwise, I could move back to Chicago. But something I think most people would agree with, and I dislike the most, is the freeway design, lack of public running tracks, and lack of public parks in certain neighborhoods.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sundayrundayla.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/domxbellamy/
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/sundayrundayla/

Image Credits
Lizbeth Saldivar