Detroit Runners Join Together to Create the Run Club Their Community Was Missing

Runner's World ^ | August 12, 2019 | Andrew Dawson

[Tolerance Sucks Rocks]

For four years, Joe Robinson and Lance Woods ran the streets of Detroit. Robinson took the east side where he resided, and Woods had the west side. But they never ran together. They didn’t know each other.

Though both lifelong Detroiters, their paths never crossed. Not in running, and not in their careers. Woods worked in youth development in the local school system while Robinson operated as a young, hip hip entrepreneur with his company APX Management, which works with up-and-coming rappers in the city.

Yet both had a similar vision for their home and the African-American community: a running club.

These visions, too, were separate at first. Each made an attempt within their own social and work circles to get a group off the ground. But both ended up not even reaching double-digit attendance.

Woods got close with a solid group of eight at most for one run, but the problem for him, and for Robinson’s group, was inconsistency.

“I would rotate between six people, but no more than two would come out at a time,” Robinson told Runner’s World. “That was it. People would hit me up on social, ‘Hey, I want to run with you.’ ‘I’ma come try it.’ But none ever came out together.”

That all changed when a mutual friend introduced them earlier this year and the two teamed up. They bonded over running, its therapeutic benefits, and their failed attempts at running clubs. The last one was what they focused on the most: A fire still burned inside both of them to create a group they believed the city needed.

[Larry Lucido]

I choose not to run.

[EEGator]

I despise jogging, but good for them.
Anything to help the community in Detroit is a great start.

[lee martell]

Any day you can make a friend is a good day.
I wish my knees would still allow me to run, but they won’t.
I’d be moving like The Tin Man after that rainstorm.