'Running While Black' tells a new story about who belongs in the sport

Runners are skinny white people. This was what Alison Mariella Désir thought until she came across a social media post from a friend, a 200-pound Black man, who was training for his first marathon.

Looking for a way to break through a persistent bout of depression, she signed up for a marathon as well. Much to her surprise, after 16 weeks of training with a Leukemia & Lymphoma Society running club in Manhattan's Central Park, Désir completed the race. And from then on she was hooked.

In her new memoir Running While Black: Finding Freedom in a Sport That Wasn't Built for Us, Désir tells the story of her non-traditional path to long distance running. Along the way, she reframes the history of American running by including the contributions of little known, yet influential Black runners in the narrative. Runners like ultra-marathon pioneer Ted Corbitt, Olympian and activist Wyomia Tyus and the first Black woman to win a marathon Marilyn Bevans, among others.

In the decade since her start in the sport, she's completed many runs, including the New York and Boston Marathons and the Run For All Women from Harlem to Washington, DC. She's also served as a founding co-chair of the Running Industry Diversity Coalition, a nonprofit founded in July 2020 that is devoted to increasing racial equity and fostering greater inclusion across all aspects of the sport and associated industry.

As Running While Black makes a case for why anyone might consider giving running a try, it also delivers a searing indictment of the ways in which the running industry perpetuates white supremacy and the marginalization of non-white voices. Désir also advocates for concrete steps the sport can take toward becoming more inclusive.

Désir spoke to NPR about how running transformed her relationship to her body, starting a running club in Harlem focused on attracting more people of color to the sport, and what she tells people who are intimidated by marathons.

After the murder of Ahmaud Arbery [in 2020]. I wrote this [op-ed] piece right before Mother's Day, which is also Ahmaud's birthday, about this new weight of living in this world as a Black woman with a son, who one day may find himself in spaces where he's unable to move freely through, where he has to correct himself or make himself small in order to appease the white gaze. And I talked about how the running industry, the running community, has always been deeply racially divided.

The op-ed went viral. Black folks were like, 'Thank you for finally putting this into words, what our experience is.' And many white people were completely shocked, had never considered what it was to run as somebody who was not white. And I was like, 'Okay, I need to write this book so that it hopefully draws awareness to these inequities and enacts some change.'When I was running my first marathon I was depressed, I was struggling with anxiety. My body was like a shell and all I wanted was to mute any kind of feeling that I had. I was drinking, I was overdosing on NyQuil [and] taking Xanax. And what running provided for me was my body was awakened again. It was simple things like recognizing that, Oh, when I run this distance, I have pain in my muscles and that means that I've been working hard. [Or], 'when I'm running at this pace, my breath sounds like this.'

I just started to notice what was going on with my body and receive that feedback, which is a really powerful force. Many of us are so disconnected from our bodies, we start to lose sense of what it's telling us. So running for me was reconnecting with who I was.

And I want that experience for everybody. It doesn't necessarily just come through running, it can come through walking, kayaking, hiking, any activity that's repetitive, that allows you to receive feedback and gain insight into yourself.