Memphis runners on their love for local group, 🏳️🌈Friends Who Like to Run🏳️🌈
Activities that require consistency—like running or many other athletic pursuits—need motivation to maintain a routine. Sustaining a good habit can be hard and takes work, so having encouragement and some accountability among friends really helps. Enter: Our local running group that I tell everybody ‘keeps me honest’ to ensure I stay active and running.
The 🏳️🌈Friends Who Like to Run🏳️🌈 group started in Memphis in June 2019. This group, founded by Rick Bartl, Thad Caperton, and Jason Hill, was formed to connect friends and unite our running community. Each week (currently Tuesday evenings), the group meets and runs a course of roughly 5 kilometers (or about 3.1 miles) in different locations around the Memphis metro area. We welcome all ages, training levels, and interest levels.
We post our pre-planned route weekly on our Facebook group so everyone knows where to meet and run. Sometimes, people modify the route on their own to run a shorter or longer distance. Other times, people choose to walk some of the way, or even show up just to say hello.
After the run, we often meet at a nearby restaurant or bar for a meal or drinks, though this has always been optional for people who need to go home or attend to another commitment. Whether before the run, after, or both, it’s nice to connect with dear friends and meet new ones—all centered around our shared running interests.
“I’ve been running since I was a kid, probably not even aware at the time that it helped me deal with stress, anxiety and depression. As an even more stressed-out adult, running had an even greater positive impact on my life. And I soon found that running with friends was even more effective at simply making me happy. I’m grateful Rick had the foresight to form our little running group, Friends Who Like to Run, (we were apparently sleep deprived when we came up with that zinger of a team name), and it’s been fun to watch it grow from a distance. I certainly hated to leave my amazing friends in Memphis, but as soon as I moved to Seattle, I joined the Seattle Frontrunners in hopes of making new friends. I’m incredibly grateful I did, since just a few weeks later the world was shut down by COVID, and I would have otherwise been completely alone in a new city. Running (at a distance) with friends throughout the pandemic undoubtedly helped save my sanity. And although due to unresolved injury I’m not currently able to join the group for runs, I still made new friends through the running group that will hopefully last a lifetime. I miss my Memphis runner friends, and all my amazing friends back home, and hope to join them for a fun run and a post-run beer or two soon.”- Thad Caperton
“Running has always been an important part of my life and it’s definitely more fun when running with friends. We started this group as a way to connect current and new runners and to provide a fun, consistent and healthy break in your week. After a stressful day, sometimes the best cure is to meet up with friends, share a laugh and break a sweat. And everyone is welcome – walkers, runners, beginners or pros. Come run, come all!!” – Rick Bartl
“Personally, I started running in summer, 2013. Over time, I have seen my consistency wax and wane—both in the number of times I run per week and the distance that I run each time. In 2018, I was running all the time, even up to the point of completing the full St. Jude Marathon (26.2 miles) that December. Some years, I haven’t even come close to that amount of running. Consistency can be hard with everything going on in life! I find it so gratifying to have a positive, affirming, and joyful group to look forward to each week. Having this group motivates me to maintain some consistency of running and to make sure I take the time to see and connect with friends. Since I started joining the group’s runs in late 2019, I have grown closer to this group and the people in it, and it has been a real source of resilience amidst the stressors of life, work, civic advocacy, and current events that affect our community.” – Shahin Samiei
Indeed, when the pandemic upended all of our lives in March, 2020, the group was a real lifesaver in so many ways. We stayed in contact using social media and met on Zoom. During that time, we thought up some very creative virtual running challenges like achieving a collective number of miles run (e.g., 200) each week, using our activity tracking apps to creatively run routes shaped like a favorite animal, encouraging 50+ people to run/walk/skip and post their results, and seeing who could run a fastest distance (e.g., 3 miles). It was a real joy to maintain that consistency even from afar, and by making and achieving those goals, we had a positive outlet for our imaginative, physical, and social needs even in such a stressful, undefined, and uncertain time.
Today, we are glad to meet again all across the city. We have run across the Big River Crossing over the Mississippi River, through neighborhoods like Cooper Young and Overton Park, and on the Vollintine-Evergreen and Shelby Farms Greenlines. Each week is something a little different! Sometimes we will meet up at formal races that take place throughout the year like the M-Town Series or Cooper Young 4-miler, and we always have good turnout at the annual St. Jude Marathon event, with people running all levels from the 5K to the full marathon.
It has been inspiring to see such a diversity of ages, experience levels, and people from throughout our community. This running group has become a community of its own and has kept me coming back and motivated. I hope that you check us out, too. All you have to do is show up and have fun. We hope to see you at the starting line!
Join our Facebook group called 🏳️🌈 Friends Who Like To Run 🏳️🌈 to stay up-to-date and to see where we’ll run next.
Shahin A. Samiei (he/him) is a native Memphian and the Shelby County Committee Chair for the Tennessee Equality Project (TEP), a statewide organization advocating equal rights for LGBTQ Tennesseans via sound public policy. His volunteer work with TEP and other advocacy organizations began in 2010 and has included the Memphis Bus Riders Union and others. His background is in public health (MPH, 2011 – University of Memphis). He currently works as an associate director of research at the University of Memphis, helping to investigate how wearable sensing platforms can inform real-time, real-world health interventions. His previous research experience includes investigating how early childhood experiences shape school readiness and later academic achievement among students in Memphis and Shelby County, Tennessee.
