[00:00:00] Kim: [00:00:00] The run crew series continues with Zone Fitness Training Run Club.

[00:00:16] Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Run Wave Podcast. I am your host Kim. If this is your first time tuning in, welcome to the show. If you are a return listener, welcome back to the show. I appreciate you tuning into this show week after week, if you haven’t already done. So be sure to subscribe to The Run Wave Podcast on your favorite podcast app so that you’ll be notified each and every time I upload a brand new episode, you can also go to therunwave.com a little fly up box.

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[00:01:36] Appreciate you keeping the run crews series going up next. We have a Houston bass run crew clubs, Zone Fitness Training Run Club. Now this club is actually run. Okay. By a personal trainer. His name is Yancy. He is a personal trainer [00:02:00] professionally. He went to school, he has a degree, he knows his stuff. So he decided to start a running club in the Houston area because, you know, there were no clubs that had people that looks like him.

[00:02:14] So he created a club of his own, and that club has just grown and, you know, they’ve expanded over the years and you know, they’re, they’re running and they’re having fun while doing it. So let’s get into my chat with Yancey right now. Please welcome Yancey of zone fitness, run clubs. So that runway podcasts, how are you?

[00:02:39] I’m good. How are you? I’m doing well. How’s it going over in Texas 

[00:02:45] Yancey: [00:02:45] there? Uh, you know, the weather is bipolar here, so I would say warm. With it being, uh, you know, April, but I would be lying because it could be 70 degrees a day and 40 degrees this weekend. [00:03:00] So, 

[00:03:00] Kim: [00:03:00] um, y’all definition of warm is different from our definition of warm up here.

[00:03:06] What’s your definition of 

[00:03:08] Yancey: [00:03:08] the humidity that is farmed recognition of what heat and ones feels like here. I was just in Vegas this past weekend and it hasn’t really good weather, but you really got to see the difference between dry heat and humidity. Like it was not, we agree is there, but it felt perfect.

[00:03:29] And you could stand outside. You didn’t sweat here, 70 degrees sweating, you got to go take a shower and everything just to, you know, just to feel better 

[00:03:38] Kim: [00:03:38] now what’s going down in Vegas. Cause everyone on my feed is in Vegas. Like the last two or three weeks what’s happening there. 

[00:03:46] Yancey: [00:03:46] Well, for me it was my birthday.

[00:03:47] So my birthday was actually. So Easter Sunday. So, um, I had been to Vegas once before, but I went for something, so I didn’t really get to [00:04:00] experience Vegas. So I was like, uh, just to be a good time for me to go back and, uh, you know, try it again and really kinda be a tourist and see what the city has to offer 

[00:04:10] Kim: [00:04:10] now.

[00:04:10] How was it? Is Vegas like open or it’s like, you can go here, 

[00:04:14] Yancey: [00:04:14] can’t go there. I feel like everybody decided to go to Vegas.

[00:04:23] It was Easter. They got that extra day off. And everybody was like, Hey, we’re going to Vegas. 

[00:04:28] Kim: [00:04:28] Well, you know, was spring break. That’s probably why there were a lot of people in there as well. 

[00:04:32] Yancey: [00:04:32] It was a, it was a, it was definitely a lot of people. And one thing that I realized, or that I, you know, got, uh, reacquainted with is how much people smoke.

[00:04:43] I didn’t know. I didn’t know people smoke cigarettes anymore. I thought cigarettes were cotton. I thought they were played out now. 

[00:04:49] Kim: [00:04:49] Cigarettes are like the year, 2000 

[00:04:54] Yancey: [00:04:54] there, every, you know, on the street and the casinos. We didn’t matter where [00:05:00] you were. It was just cigarette smoke everywhere. 

[00:05:03] Kim: [00:05:03] Yeah. I don’t think you can smoke inside in Vegas.

[00:05:06] Yeah. 

[00:05:06] Yancey: [00:05:06] Sit right at the slot machines and smoke. So 

[00:05:11] Kim: [00:05:11] I don’t think I can 

[00:05:12] Yancey: [00:05:12] handle that. Yeah. So just, yeah, like I said, I thought people had moved on to. You know, marijuana is legal now, very thing, you know, all the different things that I thought cigarettes were a thing of the past, but Vegas reminded me that they are here and in full effect 

[00:05:30] Kim: [00:05:30] his cigarettes in New York, I think it was like 10 or $15 a pack.

[00:05:34] Like I don’t know how people smoke these days, 

[00:05:38] Yancey: [00:05:38] vice to have cigarettes. 

[00:05:42] Kim: [00:05:42] Surely is. So tell me a little bit about yourself. Where are you originally 

[00:05:47] Yancey: [00:05:47] from? So I’m originally from Knoxville, Tennessee, so born and raised in Knoxville, Tennessee. Um, I graduated from, uh, high school and I [00:06:00] never looked back because I went away for, uh, college.

[00:06:06] Uh, I originally went to a school in West Virginia. I went to school to play football. So I went to school at a school called Concord university in West Virginia. Uh, my first year, and then I came back and stayed and I went to a school in Chattanooga, the university of Tennessee at Chattanooga. So that’s why I came back and finished out my, uh, my undergraduate degree.

[00:06:27] But, uh, when I left after graduation, I never, never moved back. Um, after college I stayed in Chattanooga for about six months, and then I moved to Houston and that was back in 2011. 

[00:06:43] Kim: [00:06:43] Wait, so what’s wrong with Knoxville’s small town. Yeah, God, Hey, Bell’s going down the road.

[00:06:52] Yancey: [00:06:52] I’m not going to make her actually a city. Right. So I’ve never rode a horse.

[00:07:02] [00:07:00] So we have malls.

[00:07:07] We have, you know, the ghetto, the hood, whatever, you know, it’s a regular city. It’s just, uh, You know, uh, opportunity, I’ll say that is the, the, I guess the least attractive thing for me, it was more so just the opportunity, you know, looking after I graduated from college, where can I go? That would have provided a lot of opportunity for me to do whatever it is I want to do.

[00:07:32] And, uh, yeah, Knoxville was not, especially for us. So I had to, uh, take my talents down to Texas or bring my talents down to 10. 

[00:07:43] Kim: [00:07:43] So do you still have family there 

[00:07:45] Yancey: [00:07:45] and they’re all there and none of them want to move. So

[00:07:52] I have to continue to go back to Knoxville, Tennessee, 

[00:07:55] Kim: [00:07:55] Macksville getting a bad rap. 

[00:07:58] Yancey: [00:07:58] I love it. I, like I [00:08:00] said, I wouldn’t change it for the world and I love where I’m from. I love my people. I love the city, but you know, as far as just what I was trying to do. Um, you know, with my, in my career with my life and all that good stuff, I couldn’t do it there.

[00:08:14] Kim: [00:08:14] So what city are you in right now? I’m in Houston, Texas, Houston, Texas. Y’all got hay bells going down the street there. Uh, 

[00:08:22] Yancey: [00:08:22] you’ll find them somewhere. Not far South side. You definitely can find horses. I see more horses here in Houston than I have than I did in Knoxville, Tennessee. Believe it or not.

[00:08:36] There’s a large city. 

[00:08:39] Kim: [00:08:39] See for us, like up North, like Tennessee and like Texas is like, right.

[00:08:49] Like I’ve been to Dallas and it’s like, it’s, it was cool. You know, they had good barbecue and things like that, but it was like, not really a city. It’s just like a little, uh, [00:09:00] town to me. 

[00:09:02] Yancey: [00:09:02] Well, that’s New York. Right? So, yeah. I mean, every city, I guess, besides LA, you know, would seem that way because, you know, he was in is the fourth largest city, but I guarantee if you came here just the way that, you know, we, we have to down, you know, we have areas where we have skyscrapers and, you know, tall buildings, but for the most part, those are isolated areas.

[00:09:27] And then everything else is pretty much residential. So, you know, a lot of people here, millions of people here, but yeah, just the layout of the city looks a little different, a lot 

[00:09:36] Kim: [00:09:36] different than New York and Texas is huge. Anyway. So Houston is the biggest city in Texas. Yeah. Yeah. 

[00:09:43] Yancey: [00:09:43] So know fourth largest state in the nation in the 

[00:09:47] Kim: [00:09:47] nation.

[00:09:48] So 

[00:09:51] Yancey: [00:09:51] it’s a lot of people here it’s spread out. Houston is, uh, I remember when I first moved and he was an alpha and I was, you know, out and trying [00:10:00] to meet people and stuff like that. And it seemed like everybody, I would meet, lived on the complete opposite side of town, like an hour away, hour and 15 minutes away.

[00:10:10] And I was like, this is a city where you can live in the same city as someone, but being a long distance relationship just sounds like, yeah, it’s actually good. 

[00:10:20] Kim: [00:10:20] Atlanta does not big, but it takes to go like five minutes. It takes like 40 minutes

[00:10:28] Yancey: [00:10:28] in Atlanta. It was awful. You know, when people complain about traffic here and I actually lived in Atlanta for a year and a half. So, you know, when people complain about the traffic here, I’d tell them, yeah, you don’t want to deal with that. Atlanta traffic. 

[00:10:44] Kim: [00:10:44] They don’t have nothing on Atlanta. So what is your undergrad degree in 

[00:10:49] Yancey: [00:10:49] exercise science?

[00:10:51] So, yeah, everything that I do is pretty much centered around, you know, what I studied when I was trying to do with, uh, you know, my career. So, 

[00:11:00] [00:11:00] Kim: [00:11:00] so you’re a real training and not like an Instagram 

[00:11:06] Yancey: [00:11:06] trainer, social media trainer. Yeah. And, you know, studied it for real. So, and not only do I have my degree in exercise science, but I mean, at this point I kind of lost count, but I think I have over 10 certifications, you know, just specializing in different areas of health and fitness.

[00:11:29] And that’s from, uh, you know, sports performance training to corrective exercise, to, uh, group personal training, to mixed martial arts conditioning. So it was just, you know, youth conditioning. So it was just different little specializations that I have as well to kind of, you know, broaden my scope when it comes to training.

[00:11:51] So you’re the real deal. Yeah. I like to cook. I like to say, I like to say that and I’m pretty sure my parents will say the same things as well. 

[00:12:00] [00:12:00] Kim: [00:12:00] So you’re a personal trainer by profession. Yeah. Are you the, like, where do you train your clients? Are you at a gym or you go to their homes? How does that work?

[00:12:12] Yancey: [00:12:12] So, uh, what are the way I do it is the training that I do for zone fitness training. Um, now since COVID, I actually ended up putting together a really nice, uh, home gym in my garage. So I’m was able to put that together. You know, that was one of the good things that, you know, I can say came from COVID because it really did push me, you know, all the jail for shut down.

[00:12:36] So I really didn’t have a place to, you know, train my people. So that forced me to kind of get out there and do that. So, uh, the clients that I have now through some fitness training, I trained in my garage gym. And, uh, outside of that also do corporate health, health and wellness. So I work for a company called EXOS and EXOS.

[00:12:56] They’re real big, and they’re known for sports performance [00:13:00] training. So EXOS trains, a lot of the athlete athletes that, uh, that go to the combine. So all of those athletes that you see that go to the NFL combine, uh, probably 80% of those athletes in preparation for that combine trained with EXOS. So, uh, not only do they do sports before a sports performance training, but they, uh, moved over into the corporate health and wellness realm.

[00:13:27] So with that, they have contracts with different companies like shell or Google or Microsoft or BP, you know, just big corporations, uh, and they manage the fitness facilities that those companies have for their employees. The contractors. So, uh, the last contract that I was on before we shut down while I was at shell.

[00:13:49] So going to shell, um, you know, 40 hours a week and managing their fitness facility, uh, Phillip facility that they have for their employees. 

[00:14:00] [00:14:00] Kim: [00:14:00] Now, how has that having clients come to your house? Like I know it’s texted like in New York, I like

[00:14:15] Yancey: [00:14:15] way of life, you know, Houston compared to New York people a lot more, you know, they’re friendlier, they’re more hospitable, you know, that Southern hospitality and all that good stuff, I’ll say one of the best things about it is I don’t have to drive anywhere. So, you know, my clients text me when I hear, I just got to come down and open the garage up and then we get to our sessions.

[00:14:38] So that cuts down on a lot of. You know, me being in traffic and having to commute and stuff like that to work. So that’s one of the best parts about it. People here they’re good people, good people here. So, and then all of them, I I’ve been knowing them. Some of my clients I’ve been training for years. So, you know, we have a relationship to where naked.

[00:14:58] We, we do stuff [00:15:00] outside of training as well. So, you know, that’s not bad at all. 

[00:15:04] Kim: [00:15:04] So how did you get into running? 

[00:15:07] Yancey: [00:15:07] Um, now that is actually a funny question, because believe it or not, I tell people this all the time and they don’t believe me, but I do not like running because it’s something that I kind of stumbled upon.

[00:15:23] Uh, I tell people I like being in shape and running is one of the best ways for me to accomplish that goal. Uh, but it was one of those things that, um, after college, um, you know, football was a thing of the past. There was no NFL. There was no any of that. So, you know, it was in this space. I was in a space where I was working out, but I didn’t feel like I had a goal.

[00:15:49] And it was just like working out was just a part of what I did, but I didn’t, you know, I was in shape, you know, most people, the things that people work out for, I had that like, you know, flat stomach and I had those things, [00:16:00] but I needed something. I needed a challenge. I needed something that was out of my comfort zone.

[00:16:04] Something that I wasn’t good at, something that I didn’t grow up doing. So running no became that thing. And I remember initially when I started, it was like, if you got me to run a mile, that was at my mile, don’t ask me to run anything else. This is good. This is more than most people do. And then, you know, just over time, I gradually just started challenging myself.

[00:16:29] Like, well, if I did a mile, let me see if I could do a mile and a quarter. And then that mile and a quarter turned into two miles and then that two miles turned into three. So I was just one of those things where it kind of just snowball, you know, snowballed as it got. Uh, I’ll say easier for me because I was doing it more.

[00:16:46] Kim: [00:16:46] I think that that’s a lot of people’s stories. Cause that’s like, I don’t love running either. I mean, I like it. I enjoy the benefits from it. But if I had a choice between run at 10 miles [00:17:00] or, you know, eating a pizza, we’ll eat the pizza.

[00:17:06] Yancey: [00:17:06] Because like I said, with people, knowing that I started a running club and I lead a run club, when I tell people that they just. They can’t understand what I mean when I say I don’t like running, but I have a running club, so it’s good to, you know, hear that from other people that have that same experience.

[00:17:23] Kim: [00:17:23] Yeah. Cause they like some people this is built for running. Like they that’s in their DNA. That’s what they do. They can get up and run 10 miles a day and it doesn’t mean other people have to work at it. And you know, we, we develop some sort of love, hate relationship with it, but you know, the benefits outweigh 

[00:17:42] Yancey: [00:17:42] and that’s fine.

[00:17:43] You know, you, speaking of like, some people were just built. That’s how I am with like football, basketball. Like those were my sports. I’ll play football until I can play football no more. You know, it was just something I really enjoy doing. But, uh, running is just one of those things I really had to, to grow [00:18:00] into it.

[00:18:00] And then what I’ll say, what kind of pushed me over the edge and, you know, inspired me to kind of start a run club. Cause I knew that I needed to do this with other people. Like if I was, if I was going to continue this journey, I needed other people to do this with me because you know, riding by yourself is just

[00:18:26] kinda awful running by yourself. So just one of those things where it was just like, I got to find a way to get other people to, to do this with me. So that’s kinda what inspired me to start the run club. 

[00:18:39] Kim: [00:18:39] So zone zone fitness is your training in this training. And then you added the run club once that, which is like separate, but.

[00:18:49] Similar, but separate, you know, and, um, you know, one of your members, Jasmine, she hit me up like a couple months ago and she said, you know, you got a, have she was singing your praises, you know, she’s like, you gotta have him on the [00:19:00] show. And, you know, she hit me up again recently and I was like, okay, I gotta, I gotta talk to this guy so I can, you know, get the low down on the Houston run scene.

[00:19:08] So what, what made you want to parlay and start the run club? I know you said running with other people, but, or running 

[00:19:17] Yancey: [00:19:17] with other people. And it’s crazy to think now, like, I’ll start it. You know, it was on fitness training, the personal training part of it back in 2012. Right. And I moved to a couple of cities.

[00:19:29] I lived in, I was in Houston. I was in DC. I was in Atlanta. And then I moved back to Houston and all of those cities, I did the personal training part of it in some way with Zift. Never did I think that the thing that will make. It’s all finished training. Most popular would be a run club. Last I thought, I thought I was going to be, you know, this trainer and I was going to have all these clients and they’re going to get results.

[00:19:57] And then the training aspect would be what [00:20:00] made the name for his own fitness training. And lo and behold, here we are now, most people know of his own fitness training through the run club. So it’s definitely one thing that I am glad that I started, but, um, like I said, what made me want to actually do it?

[00:20:15] Actually, I’ll take that back when I was living in Atlanta. That’s when I first got into the running, like, and that’s when I was doing my mile a mile and a quarter, um, I realized that I needed to do this with other people. So I found, or I was directed to a run club in Atlanta called movers and Pacers. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them before.

[00:20:37] So I was direct to a run club called movers and Pacers when I was in Atlanta. Um, You know, I know a girl, she was a part of it. Uh, her name is Sierra. Um, she was telling me about it, come out, come out, come out. You know how that is when you first start people telling you, and you’re like, I don’t want to run with other people.

[00:20:55] I’m just starting to stuff. But then I finally went out and [00:21:00] the, um, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the vibe of it. I enjoy seeing other people that looked like me that were on this same journey. Cause you know, this is the thing that we see other people do, but it’s not, it’s not something that we take up.

[00:21:16] It’s not something that we, you know, get in and something that we enjoy, something that we do. So it was good to see that I wasn’t the only person, you know, on this, this, this path to get into a distance running. So it was good that, and then I liked the main thing that I liked is when you went there, They, uh, had routes.

[00:21:35] So depending on your fitness level, depending on what you want to do, you could run different mileage. So they, you know, they would, we ran through Midtown. We started at Atlantic station, ran through Midtown and they will say, if you want to run a mile, you you’ll turn right on fifth street and come back.

[00:21:49] If you want to run two miles, you’ll make a right on 10th street and come back. If you want to run three and you’ll turn on 15th and come back. So, you know, that kind of gave you something to aspire to do. [00:22:00] Maybe I’ll do, you know, a mile this time and see how I feel. And then if not, I’ll, you know, if I feel good, I’ll just keep working my way up to three miles.

[00:22:09] And then, uh, they also had long distance runners. Like they were run like six, seven miles at that time. That was crazy to me. So that was something I never thought I would do, but I liked the way that they had it set up. I liked the people. So right after I joined that, uh, movers and Pacers. I think maybe three, two to three months later, I ended up moving back to Houston.

[00:22:35] So it was one of those things where I was like, dang, I was getting into it. I was really enjoying these people and working my way up now moved to Houston. And I couldn’t find a run club like that. Everything I looked up, you know, before others, but I couldn’t really find something that was catered to us.

[00:22:54] So I remember talking to one of my buddies and I was telling him about it and how I want to continue to running, [00:23:00] but I didn’t know any run clubs. And he was just straight up. Like, you should start one. Like, if you want it, if you, this is what, something that you want, just start it. Cause I thought about it for probably about a month.

[00:23:13] And then I was like, Nope, you’re right. I got, I should start it. But at that time, like I said, I don’t even think I had ran a race by that. At that time. I don’t even think I even ran three miles at that time, but I just knew it was something. If I wanted it, I needed to start in. No, here we are almost four years 

[00:23:30] Kim: [00:23:30] later.

[00:23:32] so you started and what year?

[00:23:40] Yancey: [00:23:40] 18th weekend of 2017. 

[00:23:43] Kim: [00:23:43] So it’s interesting to hear you say that in Houston. Cause you know, there’s not a lot of black folks running period. I mean, you know, we discover each other eventually, you know, over time, but I thought that Houston was a city that was heavily, I [00:24:00] mean, I’m sure it is heavily populated with black people, but black people just not running in the city.

[00:24:05] Yancey: [00:24:05] Exactly. Yeah. There’s plenty of black people here. That’s definitely not the problem. It was just more so. Yeah, just not in that space, but since I’ve started the run club, I’ll start to find. Different run clubs. Like I, I probably about what two years after we started the run club, I found out about a black man run, which I know when I was looking for a run club.

[00:24:29] Okay. Bind it. But you know, now that we, uh, you know, we’re started up and we have a good relationship with them. Uh, one of the guys, Terry is a real good liaison that he runs with a C he’s a captain for them. So he kind of keeps that bridge between us and them. And then, you know, just finding out about these different run clubs.

[00:24:48] But like I said, when I first was trying to find a run club, Couldn’t find it. So that’s what led me to go ahead and start Zift run 

[00:24:56] Kim: [00:24:56] club. So I know you, you started the [00:25:00] club because they weren’t clubs, running clubs for people that look like you, but what is the makeup of your club now? Like race wise, gender wise, 

[00:25:09] Yancey: [00:25:09] 99%, 99.5%.

[00:25:15] African-American we do have, uh, we have, you know, like two, uh, white people that run with us, but they’re, you know, they’re real cool. But yeah, majority, like I said, 99.5% of our run club is African-American 

[00:25:31] Kim: [00:25:31] and you know what that is. Okay. When I was looking for run clubs, I found one black running club and all the other clubs are white.

[00:25:41] So if I joined their club, I would have been that 0.1, you know, Yeah. So, you know, that’s, that’s okay. And it’s good that you didn’t see didn’t have what you needed in your town and you created it because, you know, that’s the story of, I had someone asked me recently, you know, he [00:26:00] was looking at the wrong crew and he said, I wish I had this where I live.

[00:26:03] I said, create it. You know, you’re not the only person out there. There’s other people out there that are probably thinking the same way that you are. It only takes one person to run around the neighborhood for someone to say, can I run with you? You know? 

[00:26:16] Yancey: [00:26:16] And that’s pretty much what it was. It was just one of those things where it was just like, I tell people I didn’t have any, any experience with running like that.

[00:26:24] And then when I first started the run club, I pretty much just used the model. That movers and Pacers. So that was pretty serious. It’s like, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I know I like that. So other people may like that, you know, over time we’ve evolved and you know, we’re probably a totally different run club than they are now.

[00:26:43] But at that time, that’s all I knew. I didn’t no anything else. I was like, this is what got me into it. So hopefully this is something that other people, uh, would enjoy too. So that is that’s pretty much, you know, how we were in the beginning, just that. And then over time, it evolved to now where as a [00:27:00] club where running are, what fifth or six half marathon as a club and our last half marathon, which was in October, we actually ran the Houston half.

[00:27:12] And we had, um, about, I want to say 65 to 70 members run the actual 13.1 miles. And these are people that have never, most of these people didn’t play sports growing up. So they don’t even have an athletic background. And, you know, if you ask them a year ago, they never would have thought that they will be running 13.1 miles.

[00:27:35] But we were able to convince people, convince 65 people, black people at that to run a half marathon. And I think that is one of our, you know, I’ll say as of now one of our biggest accomplishments, like we actually, um, they actually do a trophy for the biggest team. So we actually ended up winning that trophy.

[00:27:58] And I remember when we first [00:28:00] ran that race in 2018, we’ve ran that race three times. The first time we ran it, we had six people from our run club run it. Right. And I remember we, you know, we joined, we had our little team, it was the little six of us. And I remember looking at the leader board because they have to ask this times and all that stuff.

[00:28:22] And I remember seeing these other run clubs, they had. 25 people, 30 people, 35 people entertain him. And I remember thinking to myself, how did they get 25 people to run this half marathon like it at the time? I just, cause I had to get these. It was six including me. So it was hard. Get these five people to run with me, let alone, I’m looking at this board and y’all have 45 people from your, from your run club that have ran that race.

[00:28:53] So every year we ran it, it just, we doubled our numbers. So like the next year we had about 15 [00:29:00] people that ran it and then the next half marathon we had about 25. And then just like every time we ran a half, we just doubled the numbers. Cause I think it was one of those things where people seem that it was possible.

[00:29:11] And they seen people that look like them actually achieve the goal because it’s easy for them to look at me and, you know, see that I came from this athletic background. I’ve been playing sports my whole life. But when they seen people that that was their same height and their saying building their same size and have their same experiences actually run it, that kind of inspired them.

[00:29:32] So it was like every time we crossed that finish line, we have more people to join and, uh, you know, look into running at 13 miles. 

[00:29:42] Kim: [00:29:42] So Houston had an in-person race in 

[00:29:44] Yancey: [00:29:44] October. No. So with that, they did not. So what we did is we put on our own because we’ve started training for it. Um, I want to say it might’ve been in person or something like that, but they, you [00:30:00] know, quickly, they ended up, um, passionately or turning it into a virtual race.

[00:30:05] But by that time we had convinced all these people.

[00:30:11] So we was like, we got to give them an experience. We don’t want them to, you know, everybody to be trying to run this race by themselves and doing it on their own. So we literally, uh, Went to a park is a park that we ran, uh, that we run out a lot. It’s a very popular park here. It’s called Memorial park.

[00:30:28] And, um, here, the running trails all connected through the sea. So once you learn the trails, you can literally run those trails and run a marathon because they’re all connected. You just have to kind of learn them, but we run at different parks. And since they’re all connected, when we run the routes, we learn how to connect those trails to make longer mentally, you know, make the, the mileage longer.

[00:30:51] So we, uh, basically went to Memorial park. We hadn’t learned all the trails. We pretty much mapped out 13 miles. We had, um, [00:31:00] like we got a banner, we got a DJ out there. Like we literally like put on our own, uh, our own radius. So that way they can get, you know, some experience. Cause a lot of people that was their first time, you know, attempting at 13 miles.

[00:31:14] So we wanted to kind of be like, you know, something for them, you know, since they couldn’t experience a lap race, 

[00:31:21] Kim: [00:31:21] That’s dope because everything was canceled in 2020. So for you to be able to put that together and have people to come out to, you know, accomplish their goal and have something else to look forward to, because hopefully they can do that race this year, if it happens.

[00:31:35] Exactly. 

[00:31:36] Yancey: [00:31:36] So we’re trying to form a race now, which we’ll be running, uh, on May 2nd. We’re trying to find another half marathon. And as of now, and hopefully it’ll stay that way because of vaccines and stuff that are going out, it’s in person. So we have people in our run club that have ran two half marathons that have never ran one in person.

[00:31:57] Kim: [00:31:57] So now that’s [00:32:00] crazy because like, you, you, how did you do, did you have water stations set up or did he carry their own stuff? Like what 

[00:32:07] Yancey: [00:32:07] did you do? People, um, like, uh, some people, you know, they will come out and run with us, but they just weren’t ready to run. The 13th, so I’ll come out, I’ll volunteer, I’ll give people water.