Project Renegade LA - March 2024

Every year, ~25,000 runners take on the LA marathon. If you don’t know much about this course, it’s not the easiest. It has 943 ft of elevation gain (which is a lot for a road marathon) and can get quite warm out there, yet many love this race for the culture, diversity, scenery, and community of this race. It truly was an incredible event to spectate!

In March 2024, Renegade Running launched their first ever pop up shop in LA, Silverlake to be specific. It was a big hit, to say the least. On top of this, they partnered with Nike to sponsor 26 runners for this race called Project Renegade. Runners varied in experiences, some were 2:45 marathoners, some were 4:30 marathoners, and some had never run a marathon before. All were community leaders and activists. They were provided with resources such as training shoes, gear, nutrition, and free coaching to optimize their success on race day. On race weekend, runners had the opportunity to mingle with each other at the shop and participated in a pre-race community send off ceremony. Literally, it was a tribal ceremony and a beautiful event to witness.

The idea came from a project that Nike launched in 2021 called the Dreamweaver Program, which sponsored 150 women to qualify for the olympic trials qualifier (OTQ). I had the fortune of being part of this program and truly appreciated the amount of support, resources, and removal of barriers on race day to achieve the highest level of performance success. For 3 years, Nike supported me and other women with shoe shipments every quarter, a slack channel community, paid race entry/hotel, and training camps out to Beaverton.

Partnering with Project Renegade was an opportunity for me to pay it forward. I experienced firsthand what it was like to feel “taken care of” on a stressful race weekend. I flew myself to LA that weekend to provide pro bono physical therapy services to all 26 runners in the program to take advantage of. These appointments served to address last minute aches and pains, tune ups for those feeling good, and most importantly making sure each runner felt proud and confident of the work they had put in. As a solo practitioner, it was a busy and stressful 48 hours squeezing in 26 patients, but the reward was that all finished the marathon feeling supported by their community.

I hope through this example that other brands will use their resources to support local runners who lead by example in their community, use running as a means to bring people together, and expand diversity in our sport.

Photos by: Miya Hirabayashi