Ed Montgomery has had an off-and-on relationship with running. He ran cross country and track throughout high school, and took a break, “for about 25 years” as he describes it. However, a serious illness brought him back to the sport. “I call it my ‘top of the stairs’ moment,” he says. “I had just finished all of my radiation treatments, and caught some sort of bug. It about wiped me out,” he recalls. “I lost 20 pounds in just two and half days.” Ed continues, “I had come into the house, and started up the stairs to go to bed, and as I walked up the stairs, I got more and more winded. By the time I reached the top, I was using my hands and just laid down right there. I decided I never wanted to feel that weak again.”

So, as he recovered, he began to run again. “I remembered back to the times I felt the best, the strongest, and that was when I was exercising regularly and running.” As he returned to running, it returned him to a place of strength he hadn’t seen in decades. “On November 8th of 2008 I was calling my kids to tell them I had cancer,” he says. “On November 8th of 2009, I ran the Outer Banks Marathon.”

One of the lessons learned during that experience was how powerful even the smallest acts of kindness were to him. “One of the kids from my church brought me a balloon, and it absolutely made my day!” Ed also realized that no matter how bad his situation got, there was always some way he could help someone else, which motivated him even more.

JustBettr was born during those following years, as Ed began to compete competitively in Masters Track rising in the national rankings. He traveled, met and spoke with more coaches around the country, and heard over and over about the challenges some of their runners and teams faced. He decided that giving student-athletes the opportunity to receive the right running shoes was the sort of small act of kindness that could make a big difference in someone’s life.