Dr. Kimberly “Annie” Davis, DC, built her career on refusing to accept “stop doing what you love” as a medical plan.
As a young triathlete in her 20s, she kept getting hurt, went to a doctor who specialized in athletes, and was told to give up running.
“To tell somebody who’s trying to get healthy for the first time in their life, you just need to stop doing this thing you love, felt like a pretty bad answer to me,” she said.
So she threw away his card, delved deeply into biomechanics, earned her doctorate, and eventually founded RunLab in 2013, so that other active people wouldn’t fall through the cracks of the traditional medical model.
“People who are active and who don’t need surgery or drugs to fix their problems, there’s no place for them in the traditional medical paradigm,” she said. “So that’s the need that I’m trying to fill for this community.”
Today, Annie Davis’ Austin clinic works with everyone from elite runners to 80-year-olds who “just want to play with their grandkids and not hurt.”
What began as a resource for triathletes has become a movement lab that studies how people are built and teaches them to move in ways that don’t overload their weak spots.
“A lot of times what we see are these common patterns of weakness somewhere up the kinetic chain creating problems that are manifesting down somewhere south of that,” she said.
Austin, she said, is the perfect place to do this work. The city has year-round training weather, Town Lake Trail, a strong marathon culture, and running groups “of every shape and size.”
“We’ve sort of built this from within to say we celebrate running as a sport in this city in a way that a lot of cities don’t,” she said. When someone comes in saying another doctor told them they’d never run again, her team loves watching them finish a race and come back for a hug.
Her own routine is the backbone of it all. Davis ran every single day in 2024, a minimum of three miles, just to see if she could. “I just wanted to know at 48 if I could do it,” she said.
Daily movement, even on tour, is non-negotiable.
“If I don’t do that and take care of myself every single day, nothing else is going to work,” she said. “My body has to feel good, my brain has to feel good before I can be creative or a good CEO.”
That balance is the part most people don’t expect from a biomechanics expert: she fronts a high-energy rock band called Trashy Annie. She’d set music aside years ago, but at the beginning of COVID, she picked it back up, started writing again, and is now touring, sometimes leapfrogging cities to make shows and flying back to grab the van, all while appearing this season on Survivor.
Her workdays often run from dawn until late at night, but she says music and medicine complement one another.
“When business gets stressful, I turn to music. When music gets chaotic, I dive back into the science,” she said. “Running and fitness keep me centered between the two.”
Trashy Annie’s sound, she said, is “raw and real… Equal parts outlaw country and punk rock.” Their songs channel attitude and vulnerability in equal measure, built for small stages and big emotions.
“Music is therapy,” she said. “It’s the emotional counterpart to everything I do at RunLab. One keeps my mind sharp, and the other keeps my heart open.”
That willingness to try the next big, scary thing — start a clinic, race an Ironman, go on national TV, launch a touring band at 50 — is, to Davis, the real story.
“I think that not being afraid of fear is probably my biggest superpower,” she said. “And I always am encouraging people, just don’t be scared of stuff. Get out there and try it. We only have this one life.”
Her attitude toward wellness is refreshingly practical. She admits she doesn’t always sleep enough on tour and sometimes eats “ice cream for breakfast, champagne for lunch and a sensible dinner.” But she listens to her body, chooses real food, and believes sustainable habits beat fad diets.
“If you’re not taking care of your body first, nothing else is really going to matter,” she said.
Competing on Survivor tested her in new ways, both physically and mentally.
“It’s a total mind game,” she said. “But years of endurance sports prepared me for it. Survivor was just another kind of marathon.”
Between RunLab, Trashy Annie, and her time on Survivor, Annie Davis is modeling something Austin understands well: a wellness life that isn’t about perfection… It's about movement, courage, and momentum. “We only get this one shot to do it — be fearless."
“I think that not being afraid of fear is probably my biggest superpower. And I always am encouraging people, just don’t be scared of stuff. Get out there and try it. We only have this one life.”