Ashley is Running for Her Grandmother, GeeGee

(Written by Ashley Casiano) I am running for my grandmother, Sylvia Boehmer.  She lost her fight to cancer when I was young, but the time I had with her was so memorable.  GeeGee, as I affectionately nicknamed her, was always fun and full of life.  My brightest memory of her is from a cruise we took to the British Virgin Islands - we got off the ship and rented a Jeep to drive around the island.  My mom was driving, I was in the passenger seat, and GeeGee was in the backseat of the car - hair blowing in the wind while she drank a beer - as we zipped along lush island roads.  My mom, me, and GeeGee - three generations - had the most fun together on that cruise.  GeeGee always had the most amazing postive outlook on life.

Ashley Casiano

Ashley Casiano (formerly Hammann) has been running since high school when she was in the middle of the pack in JV Cross Country.  She graduated from Vanderbilt University in 2003 with a degree in Mechanical Engineering and immediately moved to Huntsville after graduation.  

Nicknamed “Beast” by her running buddies, she has run a lot of half marathons, 5 marathons, and 5 50ks in 9 states since Fall 2008, when she got “serious”.   

Ashley enjoys yoga, hiking, experimental cooking, and organizing.  She despises scary movies, pickles, swimming in the ocean, and trips to the post office.  She loves traveling with her mom - who also runs half marathons - and girlfriends to participate in running/shopping/eating weekends away from home and, while in town, frequently rollerblades and runs with her husband Matt, who enjoys competitive inline skating, on the Aldridge Park Greenway.  Having rollerbladed one marathon in Italy and come in second-to-last place, Ashley would much rather go the distance on foot instead of on wheels but loves being out and being active none the less.   

In her less exciting but necessary non-running life, Ashley works at Bechtel National as a Configuration Manager on the Ground-based Midcourse Missile Defense Project.