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33 laps.
That's exactly how many times our Running Mates at the Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) ran around an indoor gym to close out their five week season yesterday afternoon.
3 kilometers, roughly 1.8 miles.
Indoor.
It was like any other school-based team on a cold, snowy Tuesday in Chicago. Running laps in an indoor gym or hallway is commonplace for our young runners in the winter. As a student athlete myself, some of my most accomplished winter runs took place in my high school hallway.
For a brief moment, we could have been anywhere.
Nervous smiles during warm-ups. Determination building with every completed lap. Pride and joy beamed from young athletes’ eyes as they accepted their medal crossing the finish line after that final, thirty-third lap.
When the award celebration came to a close, athletes changed back into their pod uniforms, and routines came back into focus.
As a lifelong Chicagoan, I’ve long understood both the immense possibility and disparity that defines the character of our city, shaping contrasting lived experiences just a few miles, or even a few blocks, apart. At Chicago Run, we exist to disrupt that disparity.
So many Running Mates at JTDC shared they wanted to keep going. Boldly testing their personal limits to reach new levels of possibility. Your gift to Chicago Run is a strategic partnership in taking steps away from disparity, toward possibility.
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