Still I Run: Runners for Mental Health Awareness

By San Diego and Chicago Manager Chelsey Stone

Sasha Wolff is the founder and executive director for Still I Run, a nonprofit organization that promotes the benefits of running for mental health. This May, City Fit Tours is donating 10% of our proceeds to this incredible organization. We’ve partnered with Still I Run for numerous events (like a Marine Corps Marathon shakeout and shakeout runs in NYC) in our cities and are delighted to do so again.

Sasha’s Story

“I was hospitalized for depression and anxiety in 2011. When I was there, they taught me I have a chronic illness that needs to be managed. The other thing they taught was developing a healthy habit to go in your mental health toolkit, if you will,” Sasha said when she spoke with us last month.

Her parents were runners growing up. Sasha realized, “They modeled this healthy behavior. I figured, I've run on and off before, I guess I could try this out. So when I was discharged from the hospital the next day, I took my dog for a walk, jog, slog, whatever you want to call it. When I got back, I felt a little better, not just because I went outside but because there are all these physiological things happening in your body when you're moving. I felt this huge sense of accomplishment as well. The next day, I went a little longer and I kept going longer and faster. Eventually it occurred to me that running for mental health needed to be a permanent part of my mental health toolkit.”

Sasha lives in the Grand Rapids area home to a strong running community, so she figured it would be easy to find a group of people who ran for mental health. But when she couldn’t find one locally she expanded her search county–, state–, and countrywide. Still she found nothing. “It shocked me because I know lots of people run for mental health. So why wasn't there a group that was established to promote that? I figured if there was nothing out there I may as well do it myself.”

She started with a Facebook page, which is still active today, and “then a really poorly designed website I made by myself with my story: why I ran, about my hospitalization, and just being really vulnerable about the whole thing.”

People started reaching, saying they also run for mental health. People asked how to get involved, what kind of events there were, where they could donate. Sasha realized there was a real need for an organization the focused on running for mental health. On mental World Mental Health Day, October 10 2016, Sasha met this need by creating a nonprofit.

Still I Run

Still I Run is the only organization that works nationwide to promote the benefits of and provides programming for running for mental health.  

The organization has a number of different programs, including: 

• The Ambassador Program has over 200 Ambassadors throughout the country this year. “We're all about promoting the stories of individuals who run for mental health. They wear our gear, get access to quarterly mental health chats, we offer them free suicide prevention training and certification.”

• Chapter Programs connect people with other mental health running warriors. While Still I Run’s community is big online, this gives people a way to connect face to face. There are 12 chapters across the country.

• The Starting Line Scholarship helps people overcome any barriers they may have to run for mental health. There are three different application periods a year, and people from all around the country can apply. Once accepted, they receive all the gear they need to run for mental health. “We had one individual indicate they needed an adult jogging stroller for their disabled son because if she couldn't take him she couldn't run. 

Sasha said, “My dream is to make Still I Run a national movement, make running for mental health as normal as running for your physical health.” 

If you’d like to connect to Still I Run, the easiest way is their Facebook page. Their online presence is large and active, so be sure to check them out there.

Running Community: San Diego's Milestone Running

By San Diego and Chicago Manager Chelsey Stone

Dylan (left) and Alex (right) sit in the Pacific Beach Milestone Running store.

Above all, City Fit Tours values the opportunity to showcase our cities. Our guides love their cities, enjoy learning its history (even those born and raised there), and are passionate about sharing that love and learning with visitors. But we’re not the only ones showcasing our cities through running. We’ve gotten to know some of the running communities in our cities, and we’d like to showcase one of these for you here.

When I moved from Chicago to San Diego, the first place I went to meet people was Milestone Running’s Monday Night Run Club. I was welcomed by the other runners, each week I finding someone new to run and swap life stories with. Within a few weeks I was feeling like a regular as I said hi to those I had gotten to know. Alex Sakelarios and Dylan Marx, the hosts, were kind enough to sit down with me to talk about this awesome community they’ve created for runners.

Runners mill about inside and outside the store, catching up with friends, before the run starts.

monday run club

Every Monday evening dozens of runners gather in front of Milestone Running in Pacific Beach, San Diego. As the 6 p.m. start draws near, runners can be seen jogging in from all directions. 

Around 6:15 p.m. Milestone employees and hosts Alex Sakelarios and Dylan Marx hush the dozens of conversations happening to go over the route and distance options (usually three, four, and six miles) they’ve drawn on a large chalkboard.

Before heading out, Sakelarios snaps a photo of the crowd, then they're off in groups of twos and threes. Any cars unlucky enough to be crossing the road must patiently wait as runners go by.

A focus on community

Part of what makes this run club unique is how Alex and Dylan approach their role. Alex explained, “We are runners. We just happen to be here and have some more responsibilities, like filling up the water jug. But at the end of the day, our motivation is what is best for our runners. It's a little bit of ‘what would we want to do?’” They channel their “runner selves” when deciding the routes, how often to have vendors, and other considerations.

Alex in front of a map of the Pacific Beach and Mission Beach neighborhoods.

Alex and Dylan value community and genuine connection. Each Monday runners start their week meeting old and new friends. As Marx observed, “People [are] having conversations and catching up with each other from last week, ‘Remember you told me that’ or 'Oh, how's the job?’ We're seeing this cohesiveness with the people coming. We're building and maintaining friendships and relationships.”

Celebrating Pacific Beach

While Milestone's North Park store also has a weekly run, Alex and Dylan capitalize on their Pacific Beach (or “PB” as the locals call it) location. Alex said, “Running by the beach is awesome. We always dangle that above our North Park counterparts, ‘cool, go run an urban loop.’”

But why do that, he says, when you can “come run by the beach or the bay.” While they do welcome runners from across town, Dylan notes, “we have this cool PB community that's embraced it. They have their offshoots, like brunch clubs, [so] you have genuine, big groups of friends having breakfast parties.”

Alex does the smell test for the night’s pineapple and tells everyone it’s perfectly ripe and should be eaten soon.

The Grand Prize Pineapple

 Once runners are back at the store, it’s time for the raffle. Sakelarios raffles prizes based on the national days. National avocado day? He raffled guacamole. National chocolate milkshake day? He raffled a milkshake from the Jack-in-the-Box across the street. The one thing you can always count on is the pineapple.

In North Park Greg Lemon, one of the store’s owners, used to raffle a pineapple or watermelon as an extra prize. But, Sakelarios said, “it turned out people stopped caring about the watermelon; they only cared about the pineapple. Some have waited years to win. It's almost turned into a small achievement, a check off the bucket list—probably a little bit more special [because] it’s named ‘the grand prize’.”

While Pacific Beach’s ocean routes are hard to beat, Milestone offers numerous runs throughout the week, including speed workouts and trail runs. There’s a run for every ability, pace, or terrain.

Running Community: Read & Run Chicago

By San Diego Guide and Chicago Manager Chelsey Stone

Above all, City Fit Tours values the opportunity to showcase our cities. Our guides love their cities, enjoy learning its history (even those born and raised there), and are passionate about sharing that love and learning with visitors. But we’re not the only ones showcasing our cities through running. We’ve gotten to know some of the running communities in our cities and we’d like to showcase one of these for you here: Chicago’s Read & Run.

Read & Run designs running tours based on books. As you’ll see below, sometimes this is essentially a book club and other times the book is simply the inspiration for the run.

Before becoming a guide with City Fit Tours, I was a guide with Read & Run, so I sat down with founder Allison Yates to learn about the incredibly unique experience she brings local runners and how out-of-town visitors can get in on the action too.

What inspired you to start Read & Run?

Allison: I started Read & Run because I was reading a lot and I was running a lot–I realized, I loved these two things. Having just moved to Chicago, I felt very little connection to this place I called home, so I started to read and run to feel more connected on my own. Then I wanted other people to experience it. 

At first, it was very informal. It was about getting together to talk about books. Then I realized there are these levels of learning: reading and discussing but the next level is the background, the history, the further context to a certain building or neighborhood you're talking about. So that's why I started to pursue the tour aspect to these runs.

Allison describes the significance of this church referenced in South Side Girls, a book set in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood.

Programming, as defined by Allison

• Running tours: you can show up and not have read the book ahead of time. They are based on books, so you're supposed to be gaining a lot of information without having to do anything prior to the run. You can continue to read about the topic afterwards, if you want to. But if you learned everything you wanted to learn, you're like “great, I don't have to read another book.”

• Book club runs: meant to be a book club but with a run where you experience the book through movement prior to discussing or as we're running.

• Trail runs: Because all those trails have stories and backgrounds and can teach us a lot about the plant life in the Chicago River or different policies or native tribes that lived in the area! You can learn so much about Chicago, just on the trail. 

• General community events: not always focused on specifically a Chicago topic but it might be a Chicago author.

Can anyone join a tour?

Allison: If someone is just in town and is wondering if they should come even though they haven’t read anything, I would say absolutely. Primarily Read & Run events are meant for people who live in the city, but that doesn't mean that anybody can't join–just keep in mind there might be references to places, people, and events that are hyper local. But it’s great if you are a traveler who, like me, wants to know exactly what it is like at this moment in time, in the city you are visiting. It makes you feel like you're getting to know the world in a different way. 

We’re definitely focused on the history of the city, but it's also a lot about who we are, our identity as Chicagoans. So if that's something you're interested in, you'll get a lot of that. And if it’s a topic you really care about, you'll be able to compare how it shows up in Chicago and compare.

Chelsey (right) and Allison (left) preparing for a run of Chicago’s Gold Coast neighborhood to explore its WWII Japanese American community.

Allison’s other favorite Chicago tours

Chicago for Chicagoans: “I love their free citizen-led history walking tours that are really well researched. The people who lead them are the nerdiest, most intense people, and they're all hyper experts. I love their mission of valuing people, everyday people knowing their city's history and why that's important.”

“I also really love historian Sherman Dilla’s Chicago Mahogany tours. He's the Tick Tock historian that has gotten really really famous for good reason. The way he talks about history is hilarious and really digestible, and he focuses on Southside and black history. He makes history approachable for someone who maybe isn't usually into history or a big reader. I don't know how he fits so much information in his head, and how he connects it to so many different contemporary things. He does an incredible job of talking about why history matters today.”

Check out Read & Runs’ event page to learn more.