The day she turned 21, Veronica Velasquez packed her bags and hopped a plane from her native Bogotá, Colombia, to New York City. That was a fairly important rite of passage. Now 30 and living in Brooklyn, Velazquez has decided she’s ready for another such rite: running the ING New York City Marathon 2010.

“When I turned 30, I realized that my ‘free card,’ where I could do virtually no physical activity and still stay in shape, had expired,” she says. “So I really started picking up on sports.” For Velasquez, this meant taking up soccer again (she played in Colombia), joining a hockey team and two kickball teams, and running on the days she wasn’t playing sports. The training regimen was tough to incorporate into her hectic schedule—the self-professed “computer nerd” designs the animation for Madison Square Garden’s Jumbotrons by day and shoots documentary films in her spare time—but Velasquez loved the results.

Invigorated by her body’s response to exercise (and with a little prompting from her mother), Velazquez entered the lottery for the ING New York City Marathon 2010 and was accepted. “I wanted to do something more, and I wanted it to be big,” she enthuses. “I wanted it to be something out of my nature. Running my first marathon seemed like a cool coming-of-age challenge and a nice step toward enjoying adulthood. It’s intimidating, but also exciting.”

Velasquez’s goals for the race are modest. “I’m mainly doing this for the experience and the process I have to go through. I just want to get it done and not die on the road,” she laughs. “My motto is: Just finish the darn race.” If the verve Velazquez displays in the rest of her life is any indication, reaching that goal shouldn’t be a problem.