Philly has a lot of folks who run and great places to do it, as Billy Penn found out when it counted up all the local clubs you could join and places where you can get your steps in.
What the city had lacked, though, was an organized group advocating for the collective running community.
Until now.
The Philly Running Alliance (PRA) launched in May with a pep rally at Evil Genius Beer Co. in Fishtown. The independent, volunteer-led group grew out of the organization that owns and operates the Philly Mayor’s Cup. This year’s edition of the popular race will see 40 of the city’s run clubs competing at West Fairmount Park’s Belmont Plateau on Saturday.
The alliance is currently focused on issues of access and safety, and helping to showcase the city as “a premier running destination.” The effort to organize formally drew inspiration from seeing the representation that cyclists had with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia and pedestrians had with Feet First Philly.
PRA president Kevin Brandon said that the alliance’s founders noticed that while Philly’s cyclists and pedestrians had collective groups representing them, runners did not. And they should.
Many big cities have similar groups, such as the New York Road Runners, Atlanta Track Club and Chicago Area Runners Association.
The group wants to build an equivalent for Philadelphia, while still keeping it distinctly Philadelphian.
“Those organizations all do really good work, but it has created infrastructures where they have a lot of influence in their cities,” said Johanna Goode, a board member of PRA and co-founder and race director of the Mayor’s Cup. “And we want Philly to remain diverse and distributed in its kind of running community. We just want to be able to be a central point to kind of help with facilitating that rather than impacting that in any way, or taking that away.”
The alliance is guided by the board of 10 people, including Brandon, Goode, Mayor’s Cup co-founder Anthony LoCicero, Students Run Philly Style community outreach coordinator Michael Shipp and Alon Abramson, founder of the 26×1 Relay and West Philly Runners.
Along with the board, the alliance is building an advisory board, or run club council, made up of leaders from the more than 60 running clubs in the city. The council is currently at 25 members.
The run club council — representing parts of the city, varied background and levels of competitiveness — will help to steer the general direction of the alliance as it grows.
“I think that we need to be community-driven and informed. I think we need to let the community lead us a little bit,” Brandon said. “We’re building this ship, but I don’t know that we’ll be steering all the time. Maybe we’ll get the directions.”
That community-driven approach helped guide the location for the group’s second event, a 5-kilometer run and 2-kilometer walk that will be part of the Bicycle Coalition’s Hustle and Ride festivities in May at North Philly’s Hunting Park. The Hunting Park was chosen in part because the running community there was historically underserved.
“I think the running community here in Philly is just very segregated and there’s a big drop in participation when you go into certain neighborhoods and certain demographics,” said Shipp, a North Philly native who founded the run group Philly Track Jawn. “One of my biggest goals, just in life general, is figuring out how to expose people — especially in Black and Brown communities — to this sort of running, however that may look.”
The council will also help ensure that the issues that any single group is facing can be heard and potentially helped by the larger community.
“One group may be facing a challenge that another group has already solved,” LoCicero said. “So you could put them in touch with each other and let them have that venue to support each other.”
Brandon said that hot-topic issues that have emerged already include unreliable access to the track at the South Philadelphia Super Site. Weekend closures of MLK Drive throughout the year, not just seasonally, is another issue the alliance plans to advocate for.
The problem-solving can be as simple as sharing resources or figuring out who can open a track and turn on the lights.
The group has more ambitious goals to — including input when it comes to decisions about the streets and trails that runners use. Brandon used the redevelopment of the Ben Franklin Parkway as an example of a time when runners were not involved in the decision-making process.
“I’d love to ensure that we at least have a seat a the table and be aware of what’s going on in the planning stages before something is built that is not considering the needs of people who use that space for running,” Brandon said.
“That’s where the cyclists and pedestrians have done a fantastic job of making sure that they’re at least included in the conversation, that they know that their points are being considered, if not listened to. I think that by organizing together we’ll be able to better position ourselves to at least be in the room.”
The alliance also plans to create a running guide for Philadelphia, as well as resources on where and who you can run with, how to stay safe and healthy and how to best coexist with others on Philly’s roads and trails. The alliance has joined the Circuit Trails Coalition to assist with fundraising for trail signage around the area.
The alliance has sought advice from similar advocacy groups. Brandon said he has held meetings with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, Philly Bike Action, pedestrian advocacy group Feet First Philly, and PA Safe Roads PAC. His biggest revelation after connecting with the other groups, he said, has been their warm reception.
“There’s a bit of a sense of, ‘Finally the runners are joining what we’ve been doing for years.’ ”
Membership in the Philadelphia Running Alliance is free and you can sign up on the group’s website. Members receive a newsletter and invitations to community events.
Registration for the Mayor’s Cup is still open until 11:59 p.m. this Thursday. The Running Alliance will next host 26 x 1-Mile Marathon Relay in the Woodlands on Sept. 13.
