For endurance athlete Dillon Quitugua, ultramarathons are a way to empower fellow Pacific Islanders and also work through the pain of the abuse he鈥檇 suffered as a child. Growing up in Hawaii and Guam, he鈥檇 been regularly beaten by his father and was diagnosed with PTSD as a teenager. When he began running after college, it enabled him to process what he was feeling. But as he pushed himself to take on longer distances, the physical and emotional toll of the effort caused him to relive the trauma of his past. And yet, for Dillon, the only choice was to keep going鈥攗ntil he reached a place of love and forgiveness.

If you鈥檙e suffering from abuse or you know someone who is, help is available. Call or text the at 800-422-4453. Or reach the the by calling 1-800-799-SAFE or texting START to 88788.

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Duy Nguyen told his story to producer Stepfanie Aguiliar for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I knew it was gonna be hard, but I didn’t anticipate, honestly, how, how weak-minded I could become. Really wanting it all to be over like, I don’t care how many miles are left, I wanna go home. And I thought I could beat that mindset, and I was better than that mindset.

I’m in Los Angeles, California. I was born in Vietnam, came to America when I was one years old, and lived on the East Coast, Virginia, for about 18 years.

Professionally I run a couple of businesses. I have a restaurant out in LA. I鈥檓 a community organizer, host a couple of different event, I have a run club.

I went on a trip to Haiti to film this documentary about regular people running across the country for this nonprofit. I saw what running could do.

It was 200 miles over seven days, and these people weren’t professional athletes.You would see these people running down the street in your neighborhood. And so when I shot this, I kind of realized, Hey, this running thing is pretty cool.

These are all strangers, they decided to run across this country. The bond that they built, the relationships that were formed, it was such an incredible thing to see. I came back to LA and told my friend Mike, 鈥淗ey, we gotta do a run club. We gotta get people running.鈥�

My friend and I started Koreatown Run Club maybe eight years ago. We weren’t runners, and we kind of just got pulled into the running world. Meeting all these people, and wanting to do something different and new, we’d never thought it’d grow and change our lives to how it has today.

This run across Haiti is kind of what started my running journey and starting the run club. I would go back every year when they would do the run. The first year, I brought a friend from the run club, and they finished it, and I filmed them. I documented the whole journey.
The next year, I was like, You know what? I got three marathons under my belt. I kind of know what I’m doing. I’m just gonna run it. I’m just gonna sign up. And I signed up to run the 200 miles. And honestly, I thought I knew what I was getting myself into.

So March or April 2018 was when I ran. It’s a multi-day thing. When you’re running 200 miles across Haiti, you gotta run a marathon, and then the next day you gotta run another marathon. It鈥檚 very stressful on the body, obviously. Ultras are different than marathons for sure. It’s a different mindset you go into to finish it.

So the year I ran it, I really knew a lot of people there, but honestly, I was on my own a lot of the time, because the group spreads out when you’re running 30 to 40 miles per day. Me being on the slower end, I was coming in pretty late.

The first day, a 32-mile day, I did it. Obviously it was hard. But I did it, and then I had six days left. The second day was only 13 miles, but it was over a literal mountain.

Throughout the day, I just got slower and slower and more and more tired, as you would, and my mind was just going in a really dark place like, Man, I’m keeping everyone behind, I’m slowing everything down. There was a truck following me, making sure I was OK at that point. That truck had other things to do, but instead it was just pacing me at the end, and I just felt really bad. I was walking, and I could walk fine. I wasn’t injured or anything, but my heart just wasn’t in it. My lungs just were not in it. I was really wanting to stop at that point.

I was just walking and they were walking with me and they were talking with me. 鈥淗ow are you doing?鈥� And I just didn’t wanna talk at all. I just wanted to tell them, 鈥淛ust leave me, I’ll finish and I’ll see you there.鈥� But they didn’t, and they probably shouldn’t because, you know, safety-wise, you don’t know what can happen out there.

Then it just got to a point where I was like, You know what, I’m gonna call it. I’m keeping everyone up. I don’t wanna be the guy that basically walked this whole thing.

So I called it, I was like, 鈥淚t鈥檚 OK, I’m gonna get in the truck.鈥� And they’re like,鈥漁K no problem.鈥�

I got in the truck, I drove maybe half a mile up the route, and I was at the top of the mountain at that point. From then on it was maybe two miles, all downhill.

That’s when I kind of felt it. I was like, Man, I could have just walked for another ten minutes and I would’ve been at the top of this mountain, and I could have just coasted down. But the moment I got into the truck was the moment I took that DNF, which stands for did not finish.

I knew even if I ran every other day of this race, I’d still have that asterisk of not running those three last miles, of getting into the truck and going back home.

And so the next day I felt really bad. Everyone was sympathetic and everything. They knew where I was coming from. They knew I wasn’t a 鈥渞eal鈥� ultra marathoner, or runner. And, I did too, but I really wanted to be able to say, 鈥淗ey, I ran across Haiti, the race that got me into running.鈥�

Even though I didn’t finish that second day, there were five, six days left.

It’s crazy because when you’re running a marathon or you’re doing something really hard and then you come up to the cheer zone where all your friends are and they’re cheering for you, you just get this boost of energy that I can’t explain. You just run hard. You just get all this energy from seemingly nowhere. For a brief moment, everything’s good. Everything’s cool. You’re not in pain.

When that third day came and there was like no real pressure, I was like, Well, no one’s looking at me. No one really is expecting anything from me. I’m just gonna have fun. And I went out there and I just ran. I didn’t really think about finishing it. It’s like, Hey, if I don’t finish, I already didn’t finish.

So I just ran with no pressure, just fun, all smiles. Ran with different groups. And I felt really good. I felt really, really good.

The final day was 52 miles. I had run the whole thing with my friend Iggy. I know he had suffered from an ankle injury, so we’d probably be going the same pace. And we ran the whole thing together and we really pushed that last two miles.

Me and my friend were just running from pole to pole. There’s a little light pole, you run there. Then, 鈥淟et’s go to that other light pole. Let’s go to that other light pole.鈥� And it’s just a straight shot, and there’s nothing really around. You’re just running from one light pole to the next endlessly.

And I just remember, Oh my goodness, it’s about to be over. We鈥檙e finally going to stop running and we don’t have to run again the next day. And we ran all the way to the beach, and he ran literally all the way to the beach and got into the water. Once I passed that finish line, I just sat down and watched him get in the water and I was like, I’m done moving. Next time I’m moving, I’m going back in the car, going to the restaurant. But I just wanted to sit down, and that’s what I did. I sat down and reflected over the past couple days, and I was proud of myself, because I continued on and I did run 160-some miles. And for me at that time, that was a big thing. So I was proud of myself for being able to finish that, especially that last day. Because the last day was really, really tough.

I knew I wanted to sign up for it again while I was still there. I was probably the first person to sign up, and I came home and I was like, Yeah, I ran most of it. I didn’t do it all. But I knew that it was just a personal thing. No one thought of me any differently. They weren’t like, 鈥淗e said he was gonna do one thing and he only, he didn’t.鈥� It wasn’t anything like that.

I saw myself how others saw me. It wasn’t a failure. It was like a learning experience. Of course, one thing I really learned from that experience was to really take a step back outside of what’s going on, outside of how you feel, outside of what you’re even thinking. Think more clearly about everything that’s happening around you. I feel like if I had done that, I would not have dropped out. I would not have gotten on that truck. I would’ve said, I’m half a mile from the peak and I can cruise down, and finish and continue on to the next day.

But I wasn’t thinking clearly. I think I was just too in the moment. Everyone says to live in the moment, but sometimes you have to take a step back and pause and maybe just stop running and walk and really think about what’s going on before you make any decisions like that.

Don’t put too much pressure on yourself. And just carry forward.

Duy Nguyen is a creative entrepreneur and community-builder based in Los Angeles, where he co-founded the Koreatown Run Club. He is still hoping to return to Haiti to complete the run again, this time officially. For more information about his work, check out .

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One-third of Americans鈥攊ncluding 28 million children鈥攄on鈥檛 have a park, or other natural area, within a 10 minute walk of their home. And most areas lacking in parks are home to low-income or BIPOC communities, in which the parks that do exist are four-times smaller on average than those in wealthy areas.

This didn鈥檛 happen by accident. 鈥淒ecades of systemic racism and redlining have led to chronic disinvestments in parks and recreational facilities in many marginalized communities, resulting in too few parks as well as parks marred by cracked asphalt, barren fields, and broken play equipment,鈥� reads the conclusion of a conducted by the Trust for Public Land.

And that鈥檚 a problem, because access to nature is a major factor when it comes to quality of life, and both mental and physical health. 鈥淪pending time outside can reduce mental fatigue and improve concentration, cognitive function, memory and creativity,鈥� Alicia Harvie, the Manager of REI鈥檚 Cooperative Action Network tells 国产吃瓜黑料. 鈥淟iving near nature also provides more regular opportunities for physical activity like walking, biking, and playing sports, which helps improve physical health and reduces the risk of chronic conditions such as diabetes and heart disease.鈥�

As we’re all experiencing during the prolonged, nationwide heatwave, urban parks are also a crucial adaptation for the climate disaster. “Improving access and closing the park equity gap will provide benefits like shade, reduced flooding, and clean air that are critical as we grapple with the intensifying effects of the climate crisis,” states Bill Lee, Senior Vice President of Policy, Advocacy and Government Relations at Trust for Public Land.

Since 2014 the Outdoor Recreation Legacy Partnership (ORLP) program has been addressing the disparity in access to nature through grant assistance targeting park building, rehabilitation, and improvement projects in economically disadvantaged communities. In its nine-year history, ORLP has provided $45 million in one-to-one matching grants to 50 different communities and is currently considering applications for $192 million more. , and paid for by the (LWCF) State and Local Assistance Program.

What is the Outdoors for All Act?

In 2020, with the passage of the bipartisan Great American Outdoors Act, LWCF was permanently funded with a $900 million annual budget. But ORLP remains a discretionary grant program鈥攕ubject to the ups and downs of politics. That鈥檚 a problem the Outdoors For All Act鈥攊ntroduced in February by Senators Susan Collins (R鈥擬aine) and Alex Padilla (D鈥擟alifornia)鈥攕eeks to address. Should it be signed into law, Outdoors For All will .

How REI Is Working to Make a Difference

Now, REI is taking action. 鈥淲e all have a responsibility to address this issue,鈥� continues Harvie. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 why the co-op recently launched ,听a multiyear, nationwide initiative to ensure everyone in America has immediate access to outdoor spaces. We鈥檒l be supporting local projects and聽national, state, and local聽legislation in pursuit of our goal of getting 100m people outside in five minutes or less, no matter where they live.鈥�

REI is directly targeting passage of the Outdoors For All Act. A form on its website allows members of the public to in support of the bill. As of the time of publication, more than 45,000 people have taken the time do that. The Co-Op is also directing $5 from every $30 membership to its new Cooperative Action Fund, which will target grassroots advocacy, and partner with local non-profits to also help improve access to parks in disadvantaged communities.

鈥淲e鈥檒l be supporting local projects and聽national, state, and local聽legislation in pursuit of our goal of getting 100 million people outside in five minutes or less, no matter where they live,鈥� says Harvie. 鈥淭he Outdoors for All Act would permanently secure funding for parks and green spaces in the communities that need them most across the country.鈥�

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Fallon Davis told their story to producer Sarah Vitak for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

I was going through a very spiraling time of life. I was living in my car at one point and then couch to couch.

I was like, I cannot believe I got myself in this position.

My pronouns are they/them. I am an Afro-vegan. I am a Black Native. I’m an African-American. I am a radical educator. I am a CEO and founder of a nonprofit called STEAM (science, technology, engineering, arts, mathematics) Urban.

I’m in Newark, New Jersey. I’m originally from Somerville, New Jersey, which is about 30 minutes south.

The outdoors has been a love for me my whole life. I was inspired through sleepover camp in the woods, swimming in the lake, and going whitewater rafting and fishing. I was outside a lot. One of my favorite things to do as a kid was to ride my bike and play outside. I can remember the wind on my face and taking my hands off the handlebars and just speeding down the hills. It really was my peace, you know?

I had a lot of pressure on me growing up, being a latchkey kid and really having a single parent. They’re working all the time, and I’m really having to take care of myself and make sure that I’m keeping on track and doing what I’m supposed to be doing.

I went to the college for the business of fashion, LIM college in New York. And, it was life changing. I pretty much gave up everything I knew in a small town and went to the city.

Somewhere along the way of me graduating high school, going to college, getting into my first serious relationship, I kind of lost the outdoors. It was more of just a means to an end. You gotta walk to get to somewhere, you gotta drive to get to somewhere. I had forgotten how important it was to me, just breathing the air outside and just taking it all in.

When I turned 25, I was at the heaviest I’ve ever been in my life. I felt really depressed I was in an emotionally-abusive relationship. So I decided to move to Atlanta, that’s when I got my master’s.

I was able to find some stability in that, but I was going through a very spiraling time of life. I got into another relationship that I shouldn’t have been in, and I ended up having to flee the house I was living in and I lost my car and everything.

So I kept having to start over from the beginning. That’s a lot to figure out鈥攈ousing, how to keep a job while going to school. I was working Uber and I was barely able to make the rent and do Uber and do my master’s program.

I was living in my car at one point, and then couch to couch. I remember I was renting a room for $500 a week. I could not even afford that. I was doing Uber and. I remember I had to pay this room, or get something to eat. And I was sitting down there that weekend, and I just had water from the faucet, and I was crying. I was like, I cannot believe I got myself in this position.

So I had to like suck it up and ask my family for help and come back home. That’s not what I wanted to do. Because you’re embarrassed, you feel like you should have had your life together. People tell you you’re supposed to have your life together at a certain age.

It’s also like if you grow up without help, you don’t know what help to ask for. That’s also what I was realizing,I just didn’t know what to ask for help. I’m thinking I’m supposed to do all this and figure all this out, and I’m not really seeing any stability. I didn’t really feel at home, and especially I didn’t feel at home in my own body.

I came back to New Jersey about 2018. I had been away from home for about six years. I knew that my mom wasn’t gonna be happy about it, and she would want me to have a job. So I started looking and I found a great position. I was creating a curriculum, and I started to integrate nature and outdoors, the environmental center, uh, planting and visiting gardens. I really was enjoying how it made me feel, how it made others feel, and just started to really understand the impact of the environment.

My most profound awakening with nature happened when I went to the Grand Canyon. My mom took me on a trip for the first time.

It was during the process of me coming back, getting into this new role, and dealing with all the stuff that had happened. I didn’t have the money to go and she said, 鈥淲ell, I’ll treat you.鈥� We went to Las Vegas and she had set up a couple different outdoor excursions. We went kayaking in the Colorado River, which she made me paddle the majority of the time. It’s cold as heck out there, so you want a paddle.

It just showed me a strength that I didn’t realize I had, like, Wow, I could do this all these different miles. And it felt so good to be out there in this large body of water that was silent. You could hear the nature, the water, and the air.

And then we did a tour of the Grand Canyon. When on that native land, something happened to me. It was like a switch went off, and I just felt I was supposed to be there. I felt like I was supposed to be in this space. Then I’ve been finding out that I’m a Black Native, and my family’s Native American. So it made so much sense why I needed to get back to that space. And from there, I’ve just been exploring more.

So when I got back home, I got an invite from a friend to go on a hike. And I have always done small hikes or different things, but I didn’t actually think about it as something that could be a part of my lifestyle.

I met this great, phenomenal group of Black hikers. We had a circle and folks told their stories. And we were all kind of going through these different but similar journeys of connecting back to self, finding community. It changed my life because it allowed me to be outdoors. It really connected me back to who I was.

When I did my first hike, it gave me such a mind clarity. It gave me more oxygen to my brain, that I was able to think clearer, and I realized that I was just running, from age 25 to 30. It was a tough awakening. I had been running, running, running a long time, running from my family, and all the trauma and drama that was happening, running to try to find myself. I wasn’t listening to my inner intuition.

And I used the outdoors and healing through food to do a whole spiritual cleansing of all the traumas I’d been going through, and realized a lot of that had contributed to all that stress I was going through. It’s changed my life to this day.
I didn’t realize that home is within me, and that’s really what the outdoors gave me. A home.

Fallon Davis is an activist working to improve the lives of Black and brown individuals through science, technology, engineering, arts, and math, otherwise known as STEAM Education. They’re a pioneer in the queer fashion industry and are currently focusing on their work as co-founder, CEO, and President of STEAM Urban. You can follow them at steamurban.org.

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Alex Kim told his story to producer Lucy Little for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Essentially someone was telling me that their privilege has led them to where they are today. It’s hard to hear that from someone when you’re like, “Hey, I just wanted to know, what did you do to get to where you are?” And someone’s response is like, “It took 15 years, took a master’s degree. It took me being at summer camp and doing all these things.” And I was like, “You know, it’s crazy because when you were at summer camp, I had to stay at home and translate papers for my parents because they didn’t speak English.” We had different ways of growing up, and this person just couldn’t see that.

My pronouns are he/him. Some of my passions include being outside and just not doing any activities, just sitting on some grass or on some rocks and just looking around.

I focus a lot of my time on photography and representation of people, all types of people, and if I’m not outside, just hanging out, I’m normally in the kitchen cooking food. One of my favorite foods to make is kimchi jjigae.

I’m located in Missoula, Montana. I am the founder and director of Here Montana, an outdoor program focused on joy, community, education, and engagement for the BIPOC community in the state of Montana.

We work with youth and adults year round. We do everything from backpacking, climbing, to snowboarding, skiing, bike packing, and rafting. We make sure that there’s representation in every level.

We just want to make sure that people feel not only that they’re seen, but that they have someone that they can relate to. We want people to experience the outdoors in a way where they feel empowered and like they have the tools necessary to get out there on their own, and to celebrate their identities and communities, however they would like to do that.

I grew up in Maryland. I would say my outdoor experience as a child was very minimal. When I was really young, I think I played outside as much as I could, but it really looked like city parks and running around this sand pit that they used for salting the roads. They would have these huge sand dunes, and we would go back there and run around and try to jump our bikes and just be outside.

My parents are from Korea. Being immigrants, they really wanted me to focus on creating a life for myself, and in that lens of my parents, that was really focusing on education. Off the bat, I was a terrible student, just had a really hard time focusing.

But where I thrived was being outside. I was calm, I felt very connected. I felt like all the million things that were going through my head really settled down. Some days, I just was like, “I’m not gonna go today because it’s not working for me, but you know what is working for me is wandering around in the trees somewhere.”

One of the bigger hardships that I faced was my own acceptance of myself and my own duality and identity of like, What am I doing? Am I going to go back to like what my culture and social norms of my family are encouraging me to do? Or am I gonna completely flip over and do something else? And I was already flipped over, I was already doing something else.

I wanted to ground myself again, just like I did as a kid. And where I felt the most comfortable was being outside. And so after working for a couple years, I left on this road trip. I headed down South to Florida, and then cut over West. I didn’t know it was gonna take nine months.

I arrived in Montana in December. It was the winter, I had never seen snow like that before in my life. I remember seeing kids line up at the school bus line and there was two feet of snow. So all I saw was just like these beanies. I remember growing up in Maryland when it’s like two inches of snow and school is closed, and I was like, These people are hardcore out here.

And when I got out there, the adversity was just immediate, just with the weather itself. So I was like, What does it take to thrive living in a place like Montana?

I think one of the things that really stuck with me when I arrived in Missoula was visually not seeing a lot of people that look like myself, or that look like people that I could really connect with. Especially through the lens of being an Asian American and growing up somewhere where it was super diverse, and I was very connected to the Korean-American community, I felt very alone. I felt like I didn’t have support systems. And not having that really made me recognize how lonely it can be living in certain parts of the country.

The outdoors is very centric to our identities as Montanans. But yet, when it comes to marketing and opportunities, I think we really see a lack of effort in inviting people of different backgrounds to join the conversation or to be a part of a sport.

Here Montana was something that I thought would be really fun to do, back in late 2018, 2019. In Montana, the conversation of diversity was not necessarily around. I think a big challenge that I faced was validating why it was important to have a space for people of color living in rural states.

The city government wanted to support us, but I think the infrastructure and the leadership just didn’t have the lens to have that understanding. We still don’t have a lot of diversity in our city government. And if we don’t see that representation, then the laws and policies that are passed are not aligning with people that need those changes to be made, because there’s no one in power that can relate. So why should they care?

The pushback was just all the way through. I had asked someone, “Hey, how do you get to become where you’re at? Running these programs for the city, you’re doing all this work. How did you do that?” And the response I got was, “You didn’t get to do this when you were 14 years old like me, so you won’t be able to do this, you’re not gonna be here.” My jaw dropped because, as a leader, that’s not a great way to lead people.

That really impacted me in a deep way of A) wanting to prove them wrong, and B) it’s not about the time, it’s just more about if you can be the person that you need to be and get the training that you need to just do it. My interaction with that person really encouraged me to be better and to do better for my community.

One of the most impactful moments I’ve had working with Here Montana is on a rafting trip.We had three boats, there were people from all over our community, and I had this boat with a kid and his dad and his brother. And I remember telling this kid, “Hey, do you want to jump up and row the boat a little bit and see what it feels like?” And he jumped up there and rode the boat and was like, “This is really cool.” And I remember him looking at his dad and saying, “I don’t want to go to school if this is a job. I just want to do this for work.”

And there was something in me that just connected with this kid from when I was that age. And I’d wish that I had had that opportunity and I feel even better that I was able to help facilitate something that’s thought provoking for this kid, to recognize that the opportunities for him are endless.

What was even more amazing was, his dad looked over to me and was like, “This is your job, you’re doing this?” And I was like, “Yeah, this is my job. This is what I do.” And he just looked at his kid and he was like, “Yeah, you don’t have to go to school. If you work hard, you can do something like this and just be outside all day.” And his kid was stoked and was like, “Whoa, I could do this.”

I felt like, Oh, wow, I remember feeling like I had nothing to look forward to in my life, and then just being outside one day and I was like, This looks like a place that I could thrive and be at. I felt so much joy from that family, but also just a lot of internal joy myself of just feeling like all this work and working through these different things, impacting someone like that and hopefully changing how they perceive the outdoors鈥t was magical for sure.

We choose to let joy be the gateway to people being outside. Having a place where people can experience joy, unconditional joy, it’s just become such an important factor for this program. The reason why a lot of people come is because they don’t have to worry about being in a situation they might feel uncomfortable in, they can do it together as a community. Or if they don’t know something and they want to learn from someone that may have relatable experiences, they can find that there.

The name Here Montana came from just wanting people to understand that there have always been communities of color here and there always will be. Just taking our stake here, just saying that we’re here, we live here, we’re a part of this community,
We exist and it’s important that we’re here.

Alex Kim is an adventurer outdoor leader, photographer, and the founder and director of . Check them out on social media . You can see Alex’s photography on Instagram .

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Mercy M鈥橣on told their story to producer Sarah Vitak for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

After I got out of the course, I didn’t want to be outdoors anymore. My whole dream of being outdoors, I was not feeling it. It wasn’t something I wanted to do, and I felt so much shame around it, because the community supported me.

My name is Mercy M’fon. My pronouns are they/them. I am the executive director and the founder at Wild Diversity. We do outdoor adventures and outdoor education for the BIPOC and the LGBTQ+ communities. I am in Ellwood, Oregon, southeast of Portland.

In the beginning when I was starting Wild Diversity, I really wanted to have the actual hands-on experience with people guiding me and telling me, This is the right way to approach this, this is how to take a group out. I’m such a 鈥渘ow鈥� person, so I’m like, 鈥淟et’s just do this now. We should go do this course.鈥�

It was a 90-day instructor education course with one of these big adventure hubs. It was a leadership course. So it was an opportunity for me to really grow. If I want to run this outdoor nonprofit, I need to know what the standards are, how people are approaching it.

The course is very, very expensive. I think at the time it was around $7,000. We did a Go Fund Me to start. I think for me, I just hoped it did well, but I didn’t know if it was really gonna do it. So when it did, I was just like, Oh my gosh, I think this is gonna happen. People really want to make this happen. The community pitched in so I could get this education to help launch, and it seemed really, really exciting.

I felt pretty excited just to learn and to try new things and to have new experiences, like mountaineering, paddling on the river for weeks, rock climbing, backpacking. I’m like, This is so dreamy. But it wasn’t.

My experience in the outdoors has never been in a professional setting. So I was really looking forward to that. But I think at the end of the day that it wasn’t that much of a professional setting, that there wasn鈥檛 understanding towards other identities and people.

One thing that they did was take our IDs from us for the whole course. So we went 90 days without our wallet, our IDs, nothing. But they’re also taking us through rural Oregon. You’re hiking in the forest and all the signs are shot up, there’s shotgun shells, there’s people shooting in the distance. And you know how your mind goes when you’re on a backpacking trip or a long hike, all you do is obsess about the same thing over and over again. So I think that feeling was compounded in my mind.

This was five years ago. A lot of people of color were getting pulled over at that time for being brown. That was a huge thing from Arizona all the way up to Oregon at that time. I never felt really safe because if I’m walking through the grocery store and a cop wanted to hassle me, I have nothing. I knew of people personally who had siblings in jail, like immigration prison, just because they didn’t have their ID, even though they’re citizens. I’m already feeling like this is not a safe group.

And I didn’t feel like I was amongst people who would support me through that. They don’t understand what it’s like to be targeted by somebody who could take your life, it creates an interesting dynamic to be surrounded by people who you feel unsafe around for such a long period of time. And I’m experiencing it in a place where there’s no safe place to retreat to.

Every day you’re gonna wake up, somebody’s gonna say something inappropriate and rude to you. The people who are in the instructors don’t know any better, so they’re not gonna stop and interrupt it. So you have to be your number one advocate while being exhausted.

You either endure or you quit. But the thing is that the community paid for me to be there. So, I felt like I would be letting them down if I left. It was just like I just needed to endure it, keep my head down, and just get through it.

After I got out of the course, I didn’t want to be outdoors anymore. My whole dream of being outdoors, I was not feeling it. It wasn’t something I wanted to do and I felt so much shame around it because the community supported me. And afterwards I was radio silent about my experience because I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never raised that amount of money for myself, and they believed in something, and now I’m feeling unsure.

I had already previously signed up to partner with another organization to run a BIPOC backpacking trip after my course. So even though I was feeling like, I don’t know if this is for me, I still had this trip to guide. And going into it, I think in my mind I was like, This is gonna be my last one.

This backpacking trip was a beginner’s backpacking trip that goes through Serene Lake. And Serene Lake is well-named because it’s in this little crater, and it’s just like high trees all around it.

There’s this steep hike to get to the top of the crater that we had to do, and I鈥檓 just taking the time with the group. We had such a fun day, we get to Serene Lake, and it was so cute and there’s this one little rock sticking out that looks like a little throne in parts.

So we would all swim out to the little rock, or wade out to the rock, and we ended up calling it Lover’s Rock because we were just so in love with the scene and our trip together. It was really beautiful.

For this trip my co-guide had planned, since it was a loop, we had hid a bunch of food in the forest, because we knew we’d be back down there the last night. So our last morning, the day we were heading out, our participants woke up to them making donuts on a cast iron pan. Deep frying and making donuts in the woods. It was so, so confusing for them, the level of confusion on their face of, 鈥淗ow do you have this big bottle of oil, this heavy pan, and where do these donuts come from?鈥� And I think that was just like a special moment, a cool treat that we created for them. It was just magical from start to finish.

The experience was so beautiful, so different, so easy. It was just the ability to truly be myself. I didn’t have to code switch. I didn’t have to be more of this, less of that. I could just be myself and that was OK. It was so relaxing.

You don’t realize how you walked around life with your shoulders constantly tense, and you thought that was a natural way, until your muscles relax and you’re like, Oh, I must have been tense for a moment. And that’s the feeling I felt. It was a lifetime feeling.

Here I am, four or five years later, with Wild Diversity. We’re growing, and we’re running these programs, and I think it was because of that experience, I want our community to feel like that all the time. I want them to go outside and make connections and feel free and relax and have a level of safety out there.

So it was really coming from a place of feeling really stagnant and unsure, to just having the biggest fire under my butt, driving me forward and feeling so passionate about supporting the community.

I want people to feel good all the time. I want them to feel connected all the time. I want them to feel like they can do it and feel supported. So it really not only helped me drop back into the organization, but create the foundation in which we want all the work we do to center around.

Mercy M鈥橣on is the founder and executive director of Wild Diversity, where they connect BIPOC and LGBTQ+ people to the outdoors through adventures and education. Through their work, Mercy cultivates safe and welcoming spaces for underrepresented communities to thrive.

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Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn told her story to producer Sarah Fuss Kessler for an episode of The Daily Rally podcast. It has been edited for length and clarity.

Nine, ten-year-old me is probably going, “What are you doing? You know you can drown! What are you doing?”

I’m a journalist by trade, and I love connecting with nature. I have a side gig working at the parks department in a natural area space in Culver City in the Los Angeles area.

I decided, sometime around 2019, that I would be writing a book about my grandmother. We had traveled to Tennessee, where my mother’s family is from. And I had realized that this was the first time, in my recollection, that I had visited her grave site.

I’ve never written about my life or about my family’s life in the way that I’m attempting to now. I’m digging a lot deeper and going a lot further with stories that may uncover things that may hurt, but that can also be healing.

My mother’s mother died when my mother was ten, in 1950, from a botched tubal ligation surgery after she gave birth to her fourth child. And so I’ve been on this journey now to reclaim my grandmother’s story.

I come from generations of people that are like, 鈥淒on’t air dirty laundry. Don’t talk about things that hurt.鈥� Things like racism, womanhood, poverty, and religion. I don’t think there’s anything more terrifying than to talk to your parents about things that you’re ashamed of, or to ask them things that they might feel ashamed of, or things that might have been hurtful to them. But I wanted to be brave. And I wanted to challenge myself. I really, really want to be more courageous in my writing. I just wanted to find a way to take the plunge, and immerse myself in this new journey.

The Annenberg Community Beach House in Santa Monica was hosting a polar plunge in December. I had friends that had done polar plunges before, but I thought, Oh no, that’s not what I do. I don’t plunge into the ocean. Because getting into the water is not necessarily my jam.

I had to be about eight or nine, I was at my friend’s. I was sitting on the edge of the pool, just dangling my feet in the water. And some kid who I didn’t know just took it upon himself to push me into the deep end of the pool. I went down. I will never forget that.

I do remember feeling very heavy, feeling very frantic. And the next thing I knew, I was being lifted out of the water by my friend’s uncle who had seen me go down. Knowing that I could drown really did become a challenge for me, even when I was learning how to swim in my 40s. So I just stayed away from the water.

The Annenberg Polar Bear Plunge. I got there early. None of my friends wanted to go, and so I was just trying to make sure that I had a lay of the land, that I understood what I was getting myself into. I felt like this was an opportunity to just venture out a little further. Metaphorically that meant something to me, for what I wanted to do in my writing.

Walking into this water, and just feeling the chill lap up against my ankles and my feet and my legs. I put on all kinds of Vaseline because I was like, I’m gonna wick it away, but it still comes through. When I first got in, I thought, Oh, there’s no way I can keep going, and it not chill me to the bone.

There was another woman there who suggested that I go into the water, come out, go into the water, and come out, and acclimate myself to the temperature of the water. And so I kind of took my cues from her. Every time I would go out, I would get a little further up. I let it get up to my shoulders, and that was as far up as I could go and still be touching the floor of the ocean.

One of the big waves came and just went over my head. But that I was able to stay rooted and stay grounded in the ocean was so gratifying, despite how cold it was. At a certain point it wasn’t about it being so cold鈥攁nd it was so cold鈥攊t was just about being able to be stable and knowing that I was gonna be okay. Making it through this experience felt like I could do anything.

I didn’t feel scared because I was with a community of people. I know that the water can be very violent and can kill and destroy. But I also know that water is healing and connective matrilineally. I felt like my grandmother was in the midst of all this. Because there was a stranger who was like, 鈥淚’m gonna help you get acclimated to this,鈥� and it was another woman who was reaching out with care.

I do believe that we’re not here alone, that we are part of a whole, that includes the people that came before us. Otherwise, generational trauma wouldn’t be a thing. And it most definitely is, but there’s also generational healing and generational connectedness.

I’ve had these really courageous, independent-minded women in my family and in my history. But I’m just now discovering all the things that they had to journey through to buck against systems that told them they didn’t have a voice, or they shouldn’t have a voice, or they shouldn’t be entrepreneurial, or that they shouldn’t have the kind of lives that they had. To know that I come from that kind of courage, that kind of bravery, and that kind of fortitude, emboldens me to keep going.

Janice Rhoshalle Littlejohn is a journalist, author, and adjunct instructor at University of Southern California Annenberg’s Specialized Journalism Program. She is also a recreation services leader for , a public garden in Los Angeles County.

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When Vanessa Peralta-Mitchell earned her Coaching Certification almost six years ago, she felt an overwhelming sense of isolation.

While sitting among a group of aspiring coaches, the runner, whose parents immigrated to the U.S. from Ecuador, realized she was the only woman of color in the room. What should鈥檝e been an empowering educational moment made the mother of three from Norristown, Pennsylvania, feel intimidated to the point where she didn鈥檛 participate in most of the discussions.

鈥淕etting myself to that room and then feeling like I didn’t belong in that room鈥攎y journey could have ended right there,鈥� she said. 鈥淏ut seeing it through really propelled me into what I’m doing.鈥�

The experience inspired Peralta-Mitchell to bring more women of color into the fold. In 2020, she launched , a program that provides mentorship, career guidance, and funding to support women of color in becoming certified run coaches. The initiative aims to address a lack of representation among coaches in the running community. For example, only 7.3 percent of NCAA Division 1 head coaches are Black, Indigenous, or women of color, according to a by the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sport.

Now entering its third year, Game Changers continues to expand with 24 women participating in the 2023 cohort, up from 16 in the inaugural class.

鈥淚 think if we normalize run leadership looking like the rest of us, that’s when we can say that change is happening,鈥� Peralta-Mitchell said.

Running Became a Way to Honor Women

Growing up in New Jersey, Peralta-Mitchell was active in sports, playing soccer, basketball, and softball throughout high school. While in college, she came home during a school break and watched a women’s sports documentary, 鈥�,鈥� that inspired her. The film focused on the history of athletes who overcame inequities to participate in sports, including running. 鈥淚 was really moved by what I was seeing,鈥� Peralta-Mitchell said. 鈥淭he fact that they fought so hard to give us those equal rights, I wanted to pay homage to these women in some way.鈥�

At the time, the only running Peralta-Mitchell had done was in team sports. None of her friends or family members were runners, but she felt drawn to it because it was accessible. Right away, she set a long-term goal鈥攖o complete the New York City Marathon. In 2007, Peralta-Mitchell made her 26.2 debut at the Philadelphia Marathon, running 4:52. And in 2013, she finally met her goal, finishing the New York City Marathon in 4:55.

As one of the first people in her community to take up running, Peralta-Mitchell found herself in the unexpected position of being a source of information for friends and family interested in the sport. 鈥淚 was becoming this expert among my peers, and I felt a level of responsibility to step up to that role,鈥� she said.

She first learned about the opportunity to earn a certification through a friend, who wrote a Facebook post about the course hosted by Road Runners Club of America (RRCA). After digging deeper into the program, Peralta-Mitchell decided not to pursue it at first due to the cost and travel required to attend the two-day in-person session.

In 2017, challenging circumstances prompted a pivot. While seven months pregnant with her third child, Peralta-Mitchell was laid off from her job as a senior project manager, which led her to revisit the goal. Later that year, she took the nearest course, which was in New Hampshire, and became certified.

Aiming to Redefine the Industry

Over the years, as Peralta-Mitchell worked with different brands and companies that hired her as a run coach, she continued to notice an unsettling pattern.

鈥淭he people in charge, and the experts they brought in, were predominantly the same gender, same race. At all these different points, I was seeing this similar reel that was playing in my head,鈥� she said. 鈥淚 realized I would love to do something on my own.鈥�

Before the pandemic, Peralta-Mitchell was set to host an in-person panel of running experts made up of women of color. In her search for panelists, she found that many of the candidates had a wealth of knowledge, but didn’t have certifications and weren’t aware they could earn them. When the pandemic forced her to cancel the in-person event, Peralta-Mitchell made the panel virtual and charged audience members a fee. A portion of that fee went towards funding certifications for five women of color. That initiative grew into Game Changers, which aims to 鈥渞edefine the whole industry,鈥� Peralta-Mitchell said.

鈥淲e’re going to show people that we, women of color, are just as much experts and leaders in this space as everyone else, that we’re the ones that belong in front of the room, that we belong on the mic, that we should be the ones being Googled and in the industry books,鈥� she said.

Helping Women Build Coaching Careers

In creating the Game Changers program, Peralta-Mitchell partnered with RRCA, and together, they learned there are three main barriers for women of color earning a certification. The first is a lack of awareness of the opportunity. The second is the issue of access, and the third is cost (a Level 1 coaching certification course is $335). Because spots sell fast, RRCA now reserves a handful of spots for women of color in the Game Changers program. For the inaugural cohort in 2020, Peralta-Mitchell combined her own funds, a company donation, and contributions from friends to support the certification of 16 coaches.

In addition to the certification course, attendees of the Game Changers program earn their first aid certification, mentorship from a fellow woman of color who is a certified run coach, and access to a business strategist who helps them set long-term career goals. Those in the cohort are also paired with accountability partners who provide peer support.

鈥淚t’s not just about bringing women of color into this opportunity of being a coach,鈥� Peralta-Mitchell said. 鈥淲hat kind of post-certification support do they need? How do we retain ourselves in this space?鈥�

So far, 56 women have now become coaches through the program. Peralta-Mitchell said many are bringing running into their communities for the first time. For example, an Indigenous runner who lives on the Lummi Indian Reservation in Washington State built a program that’s designed to address the health needs of people in her area.

鈥淭he Game Changers program is helping to grow the sport in that way,鈥� she said. 鈥淵ou have women who may not have thought about coaching, now through the Game Changers program are coaching and enabling others in their community to feel like they can run too.鈥�

Peralta-Mitchell has also seen a ripple effect where mentees have inspired their mentors to take on new initiatives. For example, she said one mentor based in Texas was encouraged to create a 12-week beginner training program for her church.

This year, Game Changers is partnering with Brooks Running as a presenting sponsor. The team now consists of 75 women around the country, including 24 aspiring coaches in the 2023 cohort. For the first time, they will meet in person this fall, a big step toward the ultimate goal of giving voice to more underrepresented runners reshaping the industry.

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Anyone who has regularly consumed running media over the last couple of years is undoubtedly familiar with the work of activist, advocate, and self-avowed 鈥渄isruptor鈥� . In addition to founding New York City club and the movement supporting women鈥檚 reproductive rights, and serving as co-chair of the , D茅sir has published her highly anticipated memoir, , which will be released Oct. 18. D茅sir sat down with Women鈥檚 Running to discuss the inspiration behind the book, how her personal running story is intertwined in it, and her hopes for the future of the sport with regard to inclusivity among people of all marginalized groups and genders.

Women鈥檚 Running: Congratulations on the release of Running While Black. I feel like I鈥檝e known you and followed your story for such a long time, yet still learned so much about you as I read through it. Can you share how the book came to be?聽

Alison Mariella D茅sir: I鈥檝e always wanted to write a book and had made many previous attempts at writing manuscripts over the years. Many of them are very difficult for me to even look at now because they were focused on mental health and the period of depression I experienced, which I also discuss in this book. I was attempting to write all those manuscripts while I thought I was better, but I still was very much in a dark place. Once you start feeling better and start taking care of yourself, you can鈥檛 even believe that that was once who you were.聽

This particular book came about in 2020, after I had an op-ed published by 国产吃瓜黑料 titled 鈥�Ahmaud Arbery and Whiteness in the Running World.鈥� What was really unique and what made this book so important to me was having a Black son (Kouri, who was nearly 10 months old when I learned about Arbery鈥檚 murder) and then living through the COVID-19 pandemic. It wasn鈥檛 that police murders of Black men had necessarily increased, but we were in this moment where there was a lot less chatter happening and these murders and vigilante killings were more visible. Thinking about that and thinking about how my son will one day be a Black man compelled me to write this. I had to share that moving through space as a Black body is different from moving through space as a white body and that historically and presently, we have never had access to freedom of movement. I just had to tell that story because it also creates a possibility for change and a new world where my son could be free to run, and free to show up as his full self.

You share so much of your personal story in this book, which resonated with me as a peer to you both in age and as a fellow runner and a woman of color working in this industry. But obviously, this book isn鈥檛 just important for people like you and me to consume. Who would you say this book is for, and who do you hope to see choosing to read it?

There are two audiences for this book and they鈥檙e both big. I, for sure, hope that Black people and other people of color read this and say, 鈥淔inally, my experience is represented in a book.鈥� The complete experience is the joy, but also the pain, the fear, and the 鈥渙therness.鈥澛�

But then what鈥檚 also important is white folks reading this book and recognizing that a world exists beyond their own, which is difficult in a world that鈥檚 rooted in white supremacy and that intentionally centers white people in every situation. It is by design that white people are unaware that Black people and people of color move through the world differently, despite the fact that it has been white people and white supremacy who created the laws and environment and maintained that. So I hope that for white people, it humanizes our experiences without shaming them, and while still offering them ways to take action to do better.

When you first announced that you were writing this book, it had the working title The Unbearable Whiteness of Running. I never thought about it until I took note of the change, but to me, Running While Black is 100% the perfect name for this book because it immediately speaks to and centers your experience, which is one that will resonate with a lot of runners from marginalized groups. How did you settle on the final title?聽

With the original title, the book was more sort of a manifesto and in the category of anti-racist books, which are more instructional and intended solely for a white audience. It was my editor, who is a white woman, who said 鈥淲hat鈥檚 missing here is you.鈥� That made me realize that what鈥檚 always been powerful for me in books is when you can go on a journey with the author when you can understand their worldview and what made them who they are, and then you get on board with their struggles and their way of seeing the world. However, that required me to be a lot more vulnerable than I had ever intended to be, and that鈥檚 where you get these stories from my childhood that build an understanding of who I am.

It almost feels like an honor to be able to have the title Running While Black because that is an experience that Black people and people of color (and white people, too) understand in some way. The name is provocative, and so it鈥檒l get people interested in the book. The harder part was actually coming up with the subtitle, 鈥淔inding Freedom in a Sport That Wasn鈥檛 Built For Us,鈥� because we wanted to make it clear and make sure that people understand using the word 鈥渦s鈥� also lets you know that this is Black-centered, that the 鈥渦s鈥� is me and my people. The whole title allowed me to reconcile the fact that running has brought me so much freedom and joy, but it was never intended with somebody like me in mind.聽

I鈥檝e heard you comment about how one of the biggest challenges you expect in getting white people to read this book or even having these conversations in general, will be getting them to see that this isn鈥檛 about hating white people; it鈥檚 about hating white supremacy. Were you worried the original title might immediately make people defensive and opt not to pick up and read the book?

I think that because white people don鈥檛 learn this concept of white supremacy or whiteness, they鈥檙e not forced to think critically about their identity because they鈥檙e seen as a default. Therefore, something like that simple title is seen as an attack. While I wanted my title to be provocative and confrontational, I didn鈥檛 want people to bristle so much and feel so hateful for the title alone without getting into the meat of what I鈥檓 actually talking about. What I hope I do well through the book is take people on that journey of me asking the questions, 鈥淒o I hate white people? Or do I hate white supremacy? What does that mean, and what are the ways white supremacy and this concept of whiteness actually harm white people too?鈥� I hope this will be a lightbulb moment for folks recognizing that we are all harmed in this system, obviously to different degrees, but it is in our own best interest for all of us to want to rethink how this society, and then on a more narrow level, how our running industry and community function.

I loved reading about how you started Harlem Run. You talked about how in the beginning, you stood alone on a New York City street corner for weeks before people finally started showing up. Most people would easily give up too soon because they would feel like their big idea was a failure. It鈥檚 easy to picture you as the resilient Alison I know now and assume that you were just that determined to make it happen. But I did read the book and I also know that you鈥檙e human and that did leave you feeling somewhat defeated. So what was it that motivated you to keep showing up?

I think it was just that finding long-distance running had been such a pivotal piece of my life. As you said, I think people see me now and it鈥檚 consistent with my life that I am bold and disruptive. But I was also coming from a place where I would stay in my house for weeks, with no reason to even leave the couch. Yes, I had just run this marathon and started to feel good about myself and had gone to counseling, but I was not this person who was taking all of these risks and feeling like certainly it鈥檒l happen. But the fact that running had done so much for me, I just felt like it was my calling. I鈥檓 not a religious person, but perhaps someone who is would say that it was fate or some kind of divine message and I really just felt like I had to do this.聽

A part of my own mental health was also hinging on building this community because I had loved the running experience, but I hadn鈥檛 seen a lot of people like me. So I thought, if only I can create this space, then I can have the best of both worlds. I can have the thing that is keeping me alive, happy, and functional with people who look like me. So there was a lot at stake.聽

Seeing how Harlem Run started from you just wanting people like you to run with, to showing Black people the physical and emotional benefits of running, and eventually, being centered as a vehicle for inclusion and social change, how does it feel to see how much it鈥檚 grown and how much of an impact it鈥檚 had on the running community, now on a national level, over the years?

Yeah, talk about the unexpected, right? Harlem Run has very much followed my own personal growth in terms of recognizing, 鈥淥kay, first, I want to do this to bring other people into the sport like me.鈥� Then recognizing, 鈥淥h, the impact of seeing Black people running through a neighborhood of mostly Black people and how our community was not just our run community of people who show up, our community was this larger community of Harlem.鈥� And then recognizing that the media were interested in this story because I am a Black woman leading this group that centers Black and Brown people, recognizing, 鈥淥h, we are actually tapping into this narrative of who moves and who leads movements.鈥澛�

As my own development happened, Harlem Run sort of came with me. I think another critical piece of this is recognizing that there was this industry and that these messages weren鈥檛 just falling from the sky; that there is an industry that perpetuates and fuels these messages, whether it鈥檚 magazines, podcasts, retailers or brands saying, 鈥淥h, there are people who are creating this, and sometimes we fit into the narrative that they want and sometimes we don鈥檛.鈥� But what if we were able to actually take control and be part of creating a new narrative? There鈥檚 so much I didn鈥檛 know was possible and I鈥檓 really proud of it. I love seeing the ways that other groups borrow from what we鈥檙e doing and find us to be an inspiration or a source of hope for their own communities.

In the book, you also talk about some of the challenges you faced in the beginning of getting Harlem Run off the ground, such as when male leaders and other run groups expected you to run your event plans by them before finalizing anything and making any decisions. Would you say experiences like that prepared you for some of the challenges you鈥檝e faced as a woman of color leading the charge on inclusivity in the running industry?

Absolutely. I wish I could say that a lot has changed, but the New York City running community remains a very male-dominated space. You鈥檇 like to think that other Black and Brown men will be in support of Black women, but we know that patriarchy is also a strong force. That鈥檚 why in this book, I try to be sure that I鈥檓 talking through an intersectional lens. What I found was that, as a Black woman, I was coming up against patriarchy and these men were looking out for each other and their own interests, and they were fine having a Black woman or another woman of color being second in command, or the one who鈥檚 doing the logistical support. And this idea of the frontrunner, the front-show person being a Black or Brown man was really hard for me.

So that鈥檚 what I just started focusing on, on creating my own space. I realized collaboration is what I would鈥檝e loved and I would鈥檝e loved the support of these folks, but I鈥檓 just going to build something that authentically feels good to me. But this is, once again, where everything about our existence is political. The running community, of course, has the influence of white supremacy, of patriarchy. I was coming up against those same issues that I would when I go into rooms, and I鈥檓 also one of the only Black people and the only Black woman in a room in this male-dominated space, recognizing that I鈥檝e been here before. This has always been my existence; it鈥檚 just a matter of context.

As someone who spent more than a decade working to qualify for Boston and who has actually never experienced the event in person, much of the chapter about your experience running the 2017 race was eye-opening and admittedly a little hard for me to read.

But at the same time, even before reading your book, I grappled with similar feelings when I was struggling with , and had moments when I had to ask myself 鈥淲hy exactly is this goal so important to me?鈥� I鈥檝e realized in recent years that a lot of it did come from being a minority in these spaces and how the majority of runners who pursue a Boston qualifier and eventually make it to Boston don鈥檛 look like me.聽

Having people express overt skepticism when I鈥檇 share this goal fed into all kinds of feelings of imposter syndrome as I pursued it, which is what motivated me to share my training and goal 鈥� I don鈥檛 want to just send the message that we as runners of color deserve to be here on the starting line. I wanted to show everyone, white people and BIPOC runners alike, that we鈥檙e capable and deserving of pursuing and achieving these lofty goals, too. How have your feelings and relationship with events like the Boston Marathon shifted over the years?

I appreciate you sharing that. Whether it鈥檚 the Boston Marathon or the Abbott World Majors, I鈥檓 always sitting here just thinking critically, 鈥淲ell, what is this goal about and what is the reason you鈥檙e pursuing it? What does this actually mean to you?鈥� I鈥檝e run some of them myself, and, yes, they鈥檙e amazing marathons. But the Abbott World Marathon Majors challenge was created, at least from my understanding, in order to create incentives around bringing people to these races and creating this hype, that completing the six of them was this monumental achievement.

Now, in my opinion, there are so many amazing races and marathons across the country that you could complete six of them and also feel that sense of accomplishment, right? So what is it about the World Marathon Majors? What is it about the Boston Marathon that you鈥檙e actually invested in and excited about? And when you start to think about that, if it鈥檚 just this idea that those particular six events mean something more than any other events, well, why? What is it that you鈥檙e chasing? And if the pinnacle of this sport that鈥檚 supposed to be for all people, is to get into this race that is extremely exclusive, whether you qualify or whether you fundraise sometimes $10,000, then there鈥檚 a real mismatch here in terms of what we鈥檙e saying running is about and what the pinnacle running experience is supposed to be or mean. And as you shared, there are obviously important reasons why people would see Boston or the Majors as meaningful for them. But I hope through what I say here in the book, whether you agree with me or not, you start to question why something is of value to you. And if the value comes from other people just saying, 鈥淗ey, this is valuable,鈥� then maybe you should rethink it.

After that first, not-great experience running Boston, you returned last spring for the 2022 race, this time collaborating with , which is known to be Boston鈥檚 first Black- and Brown-led running club, in holding pre-race events and spectating the race. What was the experience this year like in comparison? Was it somewhat of a full-circle moment to be there in such a different capacity?

Yes; I think what I was able to experience this year was what the Boston Marathon could be like, if Black and Brown people were centered and given space to be ourselves. So I credit that to PIONEERS Run Crew and the , who have really taken back this idea that Boston is only for a certain type of people and brought in just joy and our culture and our spirit. Part of that is , which is an unsanctioned marathon that takes place the day before the Boston Marathon and takes you through towns in Boston, such as Jamaica Plain and Roxbury, that are mostly Black, mostly immigrant communities. This challenges the idea that the Boston Marathon is actually a Boston Marathon, since it starts in the small town of Hopkinton and goes through mostly white suburbs before finishing in Boston itself. And believe it or not, I later found out that the police were called because our cheer station at 26.True was too loud and disruptive. Isn鈥檛 it literally the point of a cheer station to be loud and disruptive? But this man in this small, white town felt the need to protect his 鈥渟pace.鈥� This just emphasized the juxtaposition of the 26.True, like, 鈥淥K, that鈥檚 your version of the Boston Marathon. Well, we will show you the real Boston Marathon the day before.鈥� This isn鈥檛 just something that is happening in Boston; it鈥檚 happening all over the country. My message in that really, is it鈥檚 important and we, as Black people, are creating our own stuff. And we will continue to do that whether you get on board or not.

Will you be back in Boston for part of your book tour this spring?

It鈥檚 not on the schedule right now; I have not been invited in any particular way. I would love to be there because Kara Goucher, Des Linden, and Lauren Fleshman also have books coming out before the race, and I think this is the most books being published by women in running ever. So, if I could put that into the universe, I would love to see all of us on a panel together, talking about our books, all of which are critical of the industry.

You recently about meeting a woman during one of your book tour stops who shared that she never knew our national parks were once segregated. Did you expect to hear comments like that and was that why you chose to include the timeline of key moments in both American Black history and running history even though this book is largely a memoir of your own experiences?

Yes, absolutely. This woman also had no knowledge that there was a point where Black people could not go to public pools, that they shut down rather than let Black people swim there. That wasn鈥檛 her history; that was her upbringing and her experience. But these were contemporary laws, and for many white folks, it is that intentional erasure and miseducation that leads people to just live in isolation of anybody else鈥檚 experience.

The people in power are the ones who create the narrative, the histories and the stories that we learn and it鈥檚 by design that white people don鈥檛 know their own history. Slavery is as much, if not more white history than it is Black history because white people designed and perpetuated the system. So contextualizing what this world actually looked like during this period of running and what our experience as Black people was, was essential to help white people and all people really understand. I鈥檓 not just saying I felt this way; I鈥檓 actually showing the conditions that create the environment such that I would feel a lack of belonging, when that鈥檚 not what I want to feel. This is the society and industry and community that I inherited.

And in the book you also talk about the initial meetings with the Running Industry Diversity Coalition, before it was officially launched with you as co-chair, and how those meetings were particularly tense, to put it mildly. But you鈥檝e also talked about how you do your best to avoid goading white people into guilt and shame when it comes to carrying out RIDC鈥檚 mission, while also emphasizing that it鈥檚 important for white people to acknowledge the role they鈥檝e played in marginalizing minority groups. What would you say are some other key components in keeping these conversations going and getting brands and industry leaders to take real action toward inclusivity and racial justice?

Something that I鈥檝e become accustomed to doing is to show how I, as a Black woman, also have privilege, and that this is not something that is exclusive to white people. Often what happens when you talk to white people is that they say, 鈥淏ut I grew up in poverty,鈥� or 鈥淚鈥檓 an immigrant,鈥� Or 鈥淚鈥檓 a first-generation American and I鈥檝e struggled, too.鈥� But being white has never been a point of struggle for them.聽

I say this because I think it鈥檚 important to mirror and be instructional. And I say, 鈥淚鈥檓 a Black woman who is able-bodied. I鈥檓 a Black woman who is cisgender. I鈥檓 a Black woman who isn鈥檛 neurodivergent.鈥� All of those things gave me privilege to be able to write this book, to be able to show up in spaces and move my body. And so I also have to be a disability activist, I have to be championing trans and non-binary folks. It鈥檚 not just white people; each of us has our role. I hope that helps people see 鈥淥h, she doesn鈥檛 hate me. She鈥檚 talking about these systems that are set up to prioritize certain people and even she exists within it.鈥� It鈥檚 really a call to action to get on board like, 鈥淥h, you have only had this blissful experience while running. Guess what? I want that, too. Let鈥檚 work together.鈥�

You鈥檝e shared that you expect to get 鈥渉ate mail鈥� about some of the book鈥檚 chapters, but say that鈥檚 a good thing because it means people are talking. But do you typically engage with those people? How do you navigate figuring out where it can actually be productive, especially when you hear the same tired comments like, 鈥淪tick to running鈥� and 鈥渒eep politics out of running?鈥�

Honestly, it depends on where I鈥檓 at and how I鈥檓 feeling. Sometimes a comment lands for me in a way that I feel like I鈥檓 in the right frame of mind where I can answer it and don鈥檛 feel personally attacked. Other times, it is exhausting and I will not engage. But people who have genuine questions like, 鈥淚鈥檝e never seen the world that way. I can鈥檛 even understand. Can you explain it further?鈥� Folks who come from a place of curiosity, I am interested in engaging with because we have to remain curious. That鈥檚 really the only way that we build empathy and then we can make change. I think I have a good feeling at this point in my life to see when there鈥檚 a genuine conversation, and when somebody just wants to incite a feeling or troll me, and that will be my guide.

You鈥檝e also shouted out athletes like Alysia Monta帽o and Mirna Valerio for being unapologetically themselves in sharing their experiences and navigating the running world as Black athletes and how that has helped to validate your own experiences. Who are some other women in the running scene who you think are changing the game or have had a significant impact on your running journey?

, co-founder of (CSRD). The more I get to know her, the more I鈥檓 blown away by how honest, intentional and just brave she is. Also, , who is not somebody whose role is to talk about anti-racism. There should not be the expectation that every Black and Brown person is talking about racial equity. Does every Black and Brown person want equity? Of course. But our sole role on this Earth is not to talk about and try to deconstruct systems. For me, this is my passion and racial justice and equity is actually the work that I do. But India is a Black woman, this work isn鈥檛 what lights her up. She鈥檚 a coach who is the voice of a lot of races and does a lot of content focused on getting beginners into running, which is a beautiful thing. She is taking up space and showing her joyful, lived experience. Another one is , who served as one of the original leadership partners of RIDC and who I鈥檝e heard say, 鈥淚鈥檓 not a runner-runner.鈥� But she runs, she moves, and she is also somebody who鈥檚 always speaking unapologetically and has just done an incredible amount of good in the running industry.

You鈥檝e talked openly about how, as a Black woman, you鈥檝e always needed to be cognizant of your personal safety and just watch your back when you鈥檙e out for a run. The recent tragic murder of Eliza Fletcher re-bubbled up some of this discussion about how these cases usually don鈥檛 get as much attention when they involve women of color. You鈥檝e been asked before if women鈥檚 safety concerns affect you differently as a Black person, which has made you see how even womanhood is typically reserved for white people. How would you like to see the running industry improve when it comes to prioritizing and centering our safety and truly making this sport open to all?

Damn, good question. I mean, the murder of Eliza Fletcher absolutely was tragic and traumatic, but what it also showed me is that representation does in fact matter. Because when it鈥檚 a white woman who鈥檚 murdered, other white women and other white people feel like that could be them, so it matters to them. But when it鈥檚 a Black person, when it鈥檚 a Black woman or Black man, the response is not the same because they don鈥檛 relate to that story. And that鈥檚 where the problem is, that there is a sense of humanity and a sense of womanness or a sense of being centered, that is coupled with whiteness. Obviously, I don鈥檛 want anyone to be murdered while doing anything. But I want the same outrage, I want the same outpouring of support and demand for resources to come when our lives are taken. It鈥檚 even been reported that several months earlier, reporting that she had been attacked by Fletcher鈥檚 killer, but her account was not taken seriously. The way our lives are valued is not the same, which is why we say 鈥淏lack Lives Matter.鈥�

You鈥檙e juggling so much now between writing and now promoting this book and everything else you鈥檝e got going on in your career. The first thing you have listed in bios such as your LinkedIn headline is 鈥渄isruptor,鈥� which I think is awesome. Is that how you want to be known and remembered?

Yes, absolutely. I do a lot of things and that鈥檚 also just who I am. My nickname that my father gave me from a very young age, 鈥淧owdered Feet,鈥� speaks to that. I think that it鈥檚 really led by my curiosity of saying, 鈥淎re we doing this just because things have always been done this way? Is there a better way of doing this? Are we doing this and leaving people out?鈥� That doesn鈥檛 mean that I always have the answers or even the resources to address the system or the story or the place that I鈥檝e disrupted. It is powerful when somebody says something that causes you to pause and rethink the way you do something, rethink why you do the thing that you do. That鈥檚 what I hope my legacy is.

You recently held your first for women of color in the running industry. What was your vision for the event? Do you plan to make it an annual tradition?

Yes; we will absolutely be doing it next year. We say this is for women, femme and non-binary folks of color, and we had all of those people attend. But there were probably over 65 women of color who were there. And I was just looking around, 鈥淚 know there are more women of color in this industry, why aren鈥檛 they here?鈥� The goal for the retreat was, on one hand, simply just to provide a space where these folks could feel seen. We wanted to affirm, 鈥淵ou are not the only. Look at how many of us there are.鈥� We wanted to create networking opportunities, so that somebody who maybe is junior level could find mentorship and support that they may not have internally. Our goal for Year 2 is to be even more intentional with creating tracks for people who are entrepreneurs, as well as for people working for brands, retailers, and events. Our goal is to really shift the industry and ensure that more women, femme, and non-binary folks are in it and can see what it means to have a career in the industry.

How has your trajectory in your running journey and doing so much work in the industry impacted your identity as a runner? What have you learned about yourself both as a woman and as a runner?

As a runner, I鈥檝e learned that I really don鈥檛 care about accolades. Medals don鈥檛 matter to me. Particular races don鈥檛 matter to me. And maybe that鈥檚 because I鈥檝e been there, done that. That doesn鈥檛 mean that I won鈥檛 ever get excited about or train for a race. But running is just something that鈥檚 an important practice in my life and an important teacher in my life. And then as a human being, it鈥檚 taught me that you can really love something and also want to change it. Something can be transformational for you and still not be accessible for other people, and you can and should pursue that.聽

What other projects do you have going on in the coming months?

I have a PBS show that鈥檚 coming out in December that is very much about Black, Indigenous and People of Color who are reclaiming their space in the outdoors. Through that, I鈥檝e been able to kayak, fly fish, hike and more. So when I think about running or movement, I think about it in terms of the places that I want to see and the communities that I want to connect with.

I鈥檓 also planning a retreat for BIPOC of all genders in Alaska next summer, which I am super excited about. I was presented with the opportunity to create this retreat with , where they handle all the logistics, and I provide the experience of going to places that probably were not on our radar, and also have conversations about belonging, safety, and joy while running incredible trails and learning about the Indigenous land that we鈥檙e running on. I鈥檓 really grateful that I can curate these types of trips that typically don鈥檛 have somebody like me leading them and I invite everyone to check it out.

Even though it鈥檚 still being fleshed out, you already have quite the book tour planned out going into 2023. What are you most looking forward to about it?

I am excited to be disruptive in new places, to say things that make people really grapple with and rethink what they thought they鈥檝e known, whether about running or about history. I鈥檒l be in communities where I won鈥檛 know most of the people who show up, which will be new for me. Some of these are spaces where I don鈥檛 imagine that conversations around racial equity are happening a lot. I鈥檒l feel safe, since I鈥檒l be with folks who I love, including Chris Lampen-Crowell and John Benedict, who are with RIDC and who have gone through some difficult conversations with me. Many of the stops will include a 5K run and a conversation, and people are welcome to join for either or both.

What do you hope readers, both white runners and runners of color, ultimately take away from this book when they finish reading it?

I hope they leave feeling empowered to run, take action, question their beliefs, and learn true stories, not just what is taught in history.聽

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.聽

The post With Her New Book, Alison Mariella D茅sir is Owning Her Role as a Running Industry Disruptor appeared first on 国产吃瓜黑料 Online.