Kevin Gonzalez, a 24-year-old from the South Bronx, had been training for the marathon his entire life — he just didn’t know it. Gonzalez didn’t regularly go on 18-mile training runs on the weekend nor did he spend hours on the treadmill; in fact, he wasn’t a runner at all. But his tough upbringing prepped him to endure a long haul, not just a sprint.
After a pre-dawn run, Gonzalez met with NationSwell recently in the front lobby of the Bowery Mission, a men’s residential recovery center in East Harlem, N.Y. After living at the shelter for a few months, Gonzalez signed up with Back on My Feet, a program that uses running to instill responsibility and self-sufficiency, with the ultimate goal of running the 2015 New York City Marathon. Gonzalez heard that the nonprofit’s morning runs had translated into 2,000 jobs and 1,400 housing placements for homeless participants, so he laced his running shoes to test whether he could be the organization’s next success story.
“I went from running the streets to running to save my life,” Gonzalez says. “Now I knew what I wanted to do and why it mattered. I had the dedication and a goal to achieve.”
That feeling of determination was new for Gonzalez, who was orphaned at a young age and spent his childhood in the foster care system. From age 17, he’s been on his own. With a minimum-wage job, Gonzalez was able to pay for his own apartment for a year before moving with his girlfriend’s family. Struggling with addictions — alcohol, drugs and cigarettes — he lost a job and was kicked out. Without anywhere to go, Gonzalez was living on the street.
His first run wasn’t easy. Another Back on My Feet member ran alongside Gonzalez for the whole hour to make sure he wasn’t alone. But that guy wanted to chat, something that Gonzalez, who was struggling to breathe, found impossible. Six months since he started, a morning run has become part of the routine, and Gonzalez’s lungs have greater capacity.
“Nothing is as relaxing as breaking a quick sweat,” Gonzalez says. “It helps with my stress and anxieties. I feel like I’m 18 again. I’m in the best shape of my life.”
The weekend before the Big Apple’s marathon last month, on one of his final practice workouts, Gonzalez stumbled and sprained his ankle. He had trained so hard and the injury didn’t seem that bad, so Gonzalez continued with his marathon plan. With his toe on the starting line in Staten Island, his shoulders were tense with nervousness. Using the resilience he’d built and strengthened over so many years, Gonzalez pushed his worries about the injury aside.
When he passed the 18th mile and saw the cheering supporters from the shelter at 110th Street, he knew he could make it. Four and a half hours after starting, he crossed the finish line in Central Park.
With one marathon down, Gonzalez already has his sights on his next one. He now has a job walking dogs, and he expects to enroll in school next year. He’s planning to run the marathon again in November 2016, cutting an hour off his time.
“I’d say running has saved my life,” Gonzalez says. “I found hope. Things are brighter than ever.”
MORE: The Running Program That’s Pulled 1,300 People Out of Homelessness
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The Running Program That’s Pulled 1,300 People Out of Homelessness
At 5:45 a.m., on a recent Friday morning, a group of about 20 homeless guys warmed up in a parking lot across the street from three shelters in East Harlem. In a circle, they did jumping jacks, twisted their torsos and touched their toes. Fifteen minutes later, they huddled up, chanted the Serenity Prayer (“God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change….”) and took off running. As they criss-crossed the bridges between Manhattan and the Bronx during their four-mile trek, the sun’s strengthening rays — bright but not yet burning — reflected off the windows of nearby towering apartment buildings. The streets were nearly empty, and quiet, a rarity in The City That Never Sleeps.
Ryan [last name omitted] began jogging with the group, known as Back on My Feet, seven months ago. Never a runner, he always wondered what the big deal about it was. Ask him today, however, and he’ll tell you it’s “so natural, almost spiritual.” Moreover, running strengthens him and teaches him consistency. Less than a year after first hitting the pavement, Ryan completed a half-marathon and is studying to be a certified substance abuse counselor. As he looped around 138th Street onto the Madison Avenue Bridge, he thought he’d be ready for the NYC marathon a couple months away.
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Back on My Feet is a program that uses running to help the homeless get their lives back on track. In addition to connecting participants with housing and jobs, Back on My Feet is founded on the notion that running can change a person’s self-image. Early morning exercise, three days a week, provides an outlet for pent-up emotions and starts to change the way someone thinks about hard work.
If the concept seems hokey or contrived, the program’s numbers show that’s not the case. Back on My Feet’s program has reached 5,200 homeless individuals. They show up voluntarily for four out of every five runs — an 82.8 percent attendance rate. More than 1,900 have obtained employment, and 1,300 have moved into independent housing.
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Back on My Feet began in Philadelphia in 2007, on one of Anne Mahlum’s morning runs. A 26-year-old social entrepreneur with short bleach-blond hair, Mahlum started running a decade earlier, at age 16, to help cope with her father’s serious gambling addiction. Running as a teen in the City of Brotherly Love, she continually passed by a group of homeless men outside the Sunday Breakfast Rescue Mission, near City Hall’s century-old white tower. In May 2007, she began to develop a friendship with them. By July, they started running with her.
Inspired, Mahlum convinced the Rescue Mission’s staff to let her form an official running club for men in the shelter. At first, nine guys signed up. In exchange, each received a brand-new, donated pair of running shoes, clothes and socks. Mahlum had only one requirement: Each person had to sign a “dedication contract,” committing them to showing up on time for a run every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, respecting themselves and supporting their teammates.
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The rules were simple, but that was the point. “If we can change the way people see themselves, can we change the direction of their lives?” Mahlum asked. In her mind, running could function as a metaphor for getting one’s life back on track after experiencing homelessness. It takes the fear that someone who’s experienced homelessness feels about words like “housing,” “employment” and “sobriety” and turns that emotion into something manageable. Running teaches that every step forward takes you closer to that finish line, but also that you don’t get to the end unless you cross every mile marker along the route. Waking up so early every morning — whether the thermometer’s bubbling over or when it’s frozen solid — instills discipline and responsibility in the participants. They’re two valuable concepts, but both are hard to teach in the abstract. They need to be lived to be experienced.
After officially obtaining tax-exempt status, Mahlum’s running club grew into a nationwide organization with 50 employees and a $6.5 million operating budget. Today, Back on My Feet has more than 50 chapters in 11 cities. Since the group began recording miles in January 2009, its residential members have run more than 462,000 miles.
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Jerry, another person who participated in Friday’s outing, used to run with a chapter on the Upper West Side a couple years back and still occasionally runs with the East Harlem group as an alumni member. A few years ago, while receiving assistance from the Fortune Society, a nonprofit focused on supporting successful reentry from prison, he signed up for Back on My Feet’s program. Jerry, who asked that his last name not be used, says he showed up for his first run bitter about his disappointments and distrustful of other people. He didn’t understand why everyone in this group kept trying to hug him or why they kept saying that no one runs alone. The first mile was painful: He felt out of breath, partially because of medication he was taking and partially, he worried, because he was permanently out of shape.
But Jerry stuck with it. Despite a criminal record that meant certain employers never called him back, he landed a job as a doorman and an apartment in Harlem. He credits Back on My Feet with preparing him for success. Today, he’ll tell you that you don’t sprint at the start of a marathon, and you don’t try to win first place either. There’s accomplishment enough, he says, in finishing.
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