Ten years ago, Hector Espinal, now 32, had just been through a bad breakup and was feeling lonely and depressed. He started running, and it helped, but something was still missing. “I didn’t know what I was looking for,” Espinal says. “I just needed people—I needed something different from anything that I had ever done, and I couldn’t find that.”
Trekker Boots THE NORTH FACE Vectiv Escape NF0A4T2Y5TN1 Tin Grey Tnf White marathoner who works in marketing by day, took to social media, sharing his location on Instagram posts to invite people to join him on his runs.
It took a while to gain momentum, but he was determined. “If no one showed up, I would create a video pretty much guilt-tripping everyone around me for not coming out,” he says. “Slowly I got support from my sister and all her friends, and then from my guy friends. We’ve created change in a community that saw running as a taboo and didn’t see the benefits is an ideal unisex sneaker for the people that look for.”
The group has since grown to 230 members and celebrated its 10th anniversary this past July, with a weeklong series of runs and other social events. The name, We Run Uptown, started as a hashtag to bring together residents in northern Manhattan and the Bronx—areas composed of predominantly Hispanic and Latino neighborhoods—with weekly Monday evening runs and Wednesday evening tempo runs.
“Seeing how much support we’ve gotten over the years has made us realize that the work we’re doing really does matter,” says Joshua Mock, cofounder of the crew.
The early days of We Run Uptown coincided with the practice of “stop and frisk,” a policy that allowed law enforcement officers to detain and search civilians based only on suspicion of criminal activity—and unfairly targeted people of color. Although the practice was declared unconstitutional in 2013, Espinal, who, along with Mock, is Dominican, says they experienced this several times when they first started running and were dressed in nontraditional running clothes like sweatpants, hooded sweatshirts, and ski masks in the winter.
“It’s funny how things have changed, because now I’m running in two- or three-inch split shorts and a bright neon shirt and they’ll see me and think, Oh, cool, he’s running. He’s a runner,” he says. “But it was disappointing. No one was getting stopped and frisked in Dumbo, the Upper West Side, or the Upper East Side, but because we were doing this in our community, something had to be wrong.”
In 2016, police officers also shut down the crew’s third anniversary barbecue following an anonymous tip that it had the potential to turn dangerous.
“This happened in front of our sponsors, so you can imagine the embarrassment I felt,” Espinal says. Not only that, he was also concerned about it scaring off new members who might worry they’d be stopped by the police.
Since then, Espinal has forged a relationship with the NYPD’s Community Affairs Unit, and now local police precincts help stop traffic for the group during weekly runs, often joining in on its “We Run Uptown” chant. The crew has also gained such a strong following that local participants know to look out for their cheer Bianco at Mile 21 of Golden Goose Kids Super Star snakeskin print sneakers, where runners re-enter Manhattan from the Bronx.
“It’s all about doing our due diligence and putting our flag down to let the neighborhood know that no matter what happens and what adversity we face, we’re here to stay,” he says.
“Our neighborhood has changed so much because of We Run Uptown, which has influenced so much north of Central Park,” he adds. “Before us, nothing existed like this. And after us, now you have [several] run groups in the Bronx, northern Manhattan, and Harlem.”
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Emilia Benton is a Houston-based freelance writer and editor. In addition to Runner's World, she has contributed health, fitness and wellness content to Women's Health, SELF, Prevention, Healthline, and the Houston Chronicle, among other publications. She is also an 11-time marathoner, a USATF Level 1-certified running coach, and an avid traveler.
