Devika Rao is a gastrointestinal medical oncologist at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, where she spends her days treating cancer, advancing research, and navigating the occasional chaos of clinical medicine. Outside the hospital, she trades clinic corridors for running trails and finds that running provides its own unique combination of challenge, humility, and questionable life decisions.

A running enthusiast, Devika’s longest distance to date is the half marathon, which means she has willingly run for over two hours and is still trying to decide whether that qualifies as dedication or temporary insanity. She trains under Coach Shariq, with whom she has also collaborated on educational content around nutrition and running. Clearly, the science of fueling matters when you spend a significant portion of your free time voluntarily exhausting yourself.

For Devika, running is about more than pace or distance. It is about consistency, community, pushing personal limits, and occasionally questioning every decision that led to signing up for a race. At RHWB, she brings her physician’s perspective, her curiosity about nutrition, and her enthusiasm for running, along with the hope that all this training will eventually make the hills feel a little less personal!

And in case her running credentials aren’t convincing enough, Devika is also the defending champion of the Rendezvous Cup 2026- a title she intends to defend with considerably more confidence than she approaches her half-marathon pace. Whether that championship was earned through athletic prowess, strategy, or sheer determination is best left to the witnesses!