Saamir Brown is running a marathon next month, and he’s doing it at only 16 years old.
Brown is a part of Students Run Philly Style. With help from his mentor, Quinn Litsinger, the Vaux High School junior has been training for the Philadelphia Marathon since the beginning of the school year in August.
Litsinger and Brown practice in a group of three with another classmate, Cornellia Abrams. Brown said he became inspired to join Students Run Philly Style and train for a marathon after seeing Abrams’ commitment.
“I saw that she was training for the marathon, and honestly, it inspired me,” he said. “It inspired me to start training and start running.”
Brown now trains six days per week to prepare for the upcoming race. His mentor, Litsinger, said he is constantly impressed with his mentee’s determination.
“This is a 16-year-old who is waking up Saturday morning and is going to be at the front steps of the school at 7 in the morning to run 19 miles,” he said. “I don’t know what you were doing when you were 16, but I was not getting up at 7 a.m. on a Saturday to do that.”
Litsinger is not alone in his awe of the program’s participants.
The program
Lauren Kobylarz started out as a mentor and volunteer for Students Run Philly Style. She became its executive director in 2022.
Before participating in the program, she never thought she would run a full marathon. This changed when she began working with the organization. Through the volunteer running program, mentors and students are paired together to follow a running plan and ultimately complete a half or full marathon.
“This program has made such an impact on my life,” she said. “I ran my first marathon because I saw our students doing this. I had been running, but I don’t know that I’d be the type of runner I am today without seeing how inspiring it is and watching people year after year take on this thing that is very difficult to do and succeed in it.”
She explained that the Philly-based group, which started in 2004, is modeled after a similar one in Los Angeles.
“It was started in 2004 as a program that was modeled after a group called Students Run LA,” she said. “A group of local funders, and specifically the Independence Foundation, saw this program on the West Coast, bringing high school kids to the LA Marathon, and thought, ‘That is incredible. How can we get that in our city too?’ ”
Now, Kobylarz said, the group is one of the biggest ones that participates in many of Philly’s popular races – including the Philly Distance Run and the Philly Marathon.
“We now work with more than 1,500 young people each year, with more than 400 volunteers that are running alongside them, and we’re one of the largest groups in the major races in the city, like the Philadelphia Marathon, The Broad Street Run, and The Philadelphia Distance Run.”
Kobylarz said the program is a long-term commitment – lasting the whole school year.
“It’s a nine-month program, so our students run a race once a month that leads up to these big milestone races,” she said. “So they’ll start with a 5K and then work their way up to a longer distance.”
Middle and high school students practice several days a week, after school or on weekends. Despite different practice schedules and sites, Kobylarz said program participants will have multiple opportunities to connect throughout a given season.
“We have 60 different sites around the city, most of which are based at schools,” she said. “So all across the city on any given day of the week when we’re in season, there is a team of young people practicing at their school. And once a month on race day, we bring them all together. So we’re decentralized in the way that we have all these different practice sites, but then we all come together as one community on race day.”
Brown is one of those students. Poking fun at his mentor, Brown explained that training for a marathon these past few months has pushed him more than ever before.
“This man made me run from 24th Street and Master Street all the way to Camden and back,” he said. “I never did that before. I’ve never ran that far in my life.”
Brown described this moment as a huge success. He also said training in the hotter summer months was challenging, but that he feels this will prepare him for the race.
Litsinger explained scheduling runs can be hard, but is important. He said safety is the top priority when training runners.
“When training as a group of three, it’s hard to find the time,” he said. “So we just want to make sure that we’re prioritizing safety. So we don’t want a student who’s training half of the practices and then trying to run 26 miles at the end of it.”
His group practices six days a week, with runs on Mondays and Tuesdays, yoga on Wednesdays, another run on Thursday, the weight room on Fridays, and a Saturday morning long run.
The races
The program has no fees associated with it, Kobylarz said. Registration fees for races, a free pair of running shoes, shirts and other resources are given to volunteers and students.
Kobylarz emphasizes the training is focused on being accessible.
“We start our training plan at a place where anyone can run or walk, and you don’t need to run fast,” she said. “We’re a noncompetitive program, and that’s actually really important to us. We don’t make cuts, and we’re not focused on speed. We’re focused on completion.”
Training plans start with time-based options, Kobylarz said. She explained this could look like 10 minutes of movement at a time, followed by rest. From there, plans will slowly increase the amount of activity time to 15, 20, and more than 20 minutes. Eventually, the plan will develop into a distance-focused approach for further distances.
“So we really try to step this up in an accessible way for people where the idea is, if you show up and you put the time in and the effort, you will be able to complete these things.”
For Brown, Litsinger and Abrams, it’s been lots of trail runs on early mornings or long days after school. But Litsinger explained the group is feeling prepared, with a qualifying race coming up ahead of the marathon.
“On Sunday, November 2, we have to run 20 miles at a minimum of a 15-minute pace, which they’re well on track to be able to achieve,” he said. “And as long as we can do that, we get our bibs and we get full qualification for the marathon.”
Kobylarz said there are also different goals and training plans based on the distances students want to complete.
“So Philly Marathon weekend for example, we’ll have a couple hundred people in the half, a couple hundred people in the full, and a whole bunch of brand new runners in the 8K,” she said. “And we will probably have about 1,000 people out there for the Broad Street Run.”
Impact
Kobylarz said this program is one of the only ones that offers longer distance options for younger participants.
“I think young people are the future of the running community, which is a pretty robust and kind and supportive community here in Philadelphia,” she said. “We are the only youth program where our young people can train up to a full marathon. I think that’s what makes us pretty unique.”
She said it also builds confidence and belief in young students when they are able to participate alongside adults in running-related activities.
“It is really powerful and empowering for a teenager to say, ‘I’m doing this, just like all of these adults are doing this,’” she said. “And it’s hard for everybody, you can’t fake a marathon. You have to put the training in to it to feel good at the end of it and to get to the end of it. I see our students working towards that finish line, but also working on their mindset along the way. It just changes at the end of it. When you see that you can do this thing that once felt like you could never do it, you believe you can do anything. And that’s really powerful for any person, let alone a teenager.”
Litsinger agreed. He said that his two mentees have shown incredible determination and confidence-building through the program.
“I think there’s just an air of determination,” he said. “This is a mountain that they know that they’re climbing, and then all their peers know that they’re climbing, too, and it’s nice to see them flex that to their peers, too, because they deserve to flex that to their peers. There’s just an air of resiliency and of determination, and they’re hungry, they’re ready to get it.”
He explained he is grateful for Students Run Philly Style for providing resources for students to succeed.
Kobylarz added there would be no Students Run Philly Style without the organization’s volunteers.
“We are volunteer-powered in everything we do,” she said. “This growth that I’m talking about is because of the incredible time and commitment of the volunteers who spend their time running and mentoring our students.”
You can catch Students Run Philly Style at just about any upcoming Philly race – including the upcoming Philadelphia Marathon. To learn more, head over to their website.
The post This Philly nonprofit trains school-aged students to run a full or half marathon appeared first on Billy Penn at WHYY.
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