Lance Woods and Joe Robinson are the co-founders of the Detroit-based running club We Run 313. Along with Lynzee Mychael Slappey, they are also the co-authors of the book We Run 313: The Pulse of Detroit's Run Club (Wayne State University Press), which compiles reflections on the club's spirit and community from some 40 runners and members. Both are Detroit natives, as well as avid and experienced athletes who have completed marathons all across the world.
The first We Run 313 Club event was a Two-Mile Tuesday run in May 2019. How did that event come to be?
Lance Woods: I moved back to Detroit in 2014. That's also when I kind of started running, started to get a little more serious. Did my first 10k, half marathon, then experienced my first Black-led run club.
That was right around when Joe and I first met. We were doing similar things on the opposite side of town. I'm from the West Side, he's from the East Side. A mutual friend connected us, saying, "Y'all are the only two people I see running the way that y'all running." We were running races; we actually happened to be at the Miami Marathon at the same time, but didn't know each other yet. That was when I met District Running Collective, a Black-led run crew. They've got a huge running community, one of the first run clubs that really created a run crew culture.
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| Lance Woods | |
When Joe and I met, and I saw how avid he was about running, that's what made me be like, yeah, we need to do this. He was teaching me things that I didn't even know about the running world. We started running together, started putting our ideas together. We created a link to sign up for that first run, got on Instagram, and ended up with 160 people registered--110 of them actually showed up.
Joe Robinson: Then from there, we just kind of put together a schedule and figured out what the cadence was going to be. We started with two-mile fun runs and went from there.
Woods: We basically infused Black culture into the running space and made it fun. We kept it up, stayed consistent, and then the next thing you know, we're speaking on the news and doing all these things, because it was something that Detroit had never seen.
Robinson: I'd tried to start running in 2014. I hated it. Absolutely hated it. I did it wrong! I went and tried to do sprints or something. Then in 2016, I tried it again, but this time I decided to just go from stop sign to driveway. The corner. Basically trying to cover distance, but giving myself these tiny markers in between just to get through it. I got more serious after I did my first half-marathon, which was Detroit Free Press in 2018. Me and Lance met, like he said. And in there, I had gone to L.A., and I had a first-time experience with a Black run club, FrontRunners LA (which is now Keep It 100). I went because a friend told me to, and I was like, "Damn, this is sweet." First of all, I had never seen a run club. But then, also, I had never seen young African-American people out there doing runs. For a long time, I lived in a silo. I thought I was the only one until I met Lance, then I thought me and him were the only ones.
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| Joe Robinson | |
It's so funny that he was getting inspired by someone, and I was getting inspired by someone as well. And like he said, we came together, had a conversation, and we just put it together and it worked out.
You both experienced something fundamentally counter to the narrative or myth that Black Americans don't run.
Woods: I wouldn't even say it's a myth. It is true, kind of. It's not that we don't run. It's the distances in which we do: you'll see Black people dominating on the track. Or if you look at marathons, there are Black people there too, you just don't see us coming out in big numbers.
You won't commonly see Black people running around in their neighborhoods. Yes, that is shifting, though it's still not as common or normalized as we'd like it to be.
Prior to this? None of us liked running. Joe said he hated it. I hated it. Since we've started running more seriously and learned how to run, it became more than just the physical act of it. Because as we did it more, we started to see, like, wow, this is helping me mentally. This is helping me spiritually. This is helping me emotionally, for me to breathe and pause and just sort my thoughts and whatever life challenges. I'm reminded that I can put one foot in front of the next. To reach whatever goal it is I have set for myself. Once we started figuring that part out, I was, like, we gotta share this.
We created a space where we're encouraging people, we're motivating people, stripping the social barriers that exist between us as humans. It breaks the ice. Whatever your ethnicity is, or your religion, or what you do for work--none of that matters because we're all showing up to the space. And that's where the connectivity happens.
The club slogan is, "Connect, run, build." Connecting like-minded individuals through running to build a healthy, happy community. That's the mission. That's the vision. That's what we've been doing for seven years now, and it's turned into this movement, so to speak, that has sparked movement.
You all talk about the mantra "Finish what you start." What does that mean for you both, individually, and for the club looking forward?
Woods: I think the book is really going to let people who pick it up feel the energy of We Run 313. They're going to see the photos, it's going to spark movement. It's going to get people to realize that you start where you are. A lot of times people don't start, because they already have these limiting beliefs in their mind that they can't do something. It stretches far beyond the pavement; it's bigger than that. I think the book is going to unlock something and tear down those limited beliefs some people have.
Robinson: Somebody asked me recently, "What's your dream?" And I was, like, man, my dream day starts with me going for a run. And then I realized how much of my dream has already happened. And I know people talk about things like, oh, my dream is to have a Ferrari, do this, do that. But the real dream is that first thing that you think about in terms of what has happened or what you're able to do at the top of your day. And I love nothing more than to just get the run in.
Other things have already happened, or they're in flight. I wanted to go to Europe, Australia, the Middle East--I've done those things. I want to be a successful entrepreneur--in flight. I want my kids to be successful--in flight. It's all in progress. So when I talk about finish what you start, it's continuing those things that are in progress. At one point you were really excited to start, then the process ebbed and flowed. Lock in, finish it. Because one day, you're going to be able to sit back and say, "This is my dream." --Kerry McHugh, Textus Collective