Boston Reebok 10k for Women

Part II of Indigenous People’s Day also known as running weekend in Boston continues. Today is the Reebok’s Women’s 10k, which use to called the Tuft’s women’s 10k race. Reebok took over 2 years ago. Hence, which is why I still want to call it Tufts.

This is the first year BGR Boston has a tent at this race and I was more then happy to volunteer. I got there early, 7:15a.m. to help set up. The race started at 12pm and vendors had between 7 and 8:30a.m. to set up their tables and tent. This was the only time that cars would be allowed to drive on the commons to help step up their spaces. We had space number #12. I was able to tell our member where to drive and drop off the tent for set up.

I’m very proud of the group effort that was made to get a space for this race. My job was to talk about BGR and promote it to others. Just on a side note, my left knee is feeling better. I can bend it without as much pain. Thou I wanted to do a quick run, I knew better. Ugh.

We had a variety of interesting people come by our tent to find out what we were about. A theme that has happened many times, people ask “ so what do you do?”, What are you about?

Fuel for thought:

There have been many white women who teach students of color, or do some exercise program for them and they ask us if young girls can join or they ask if we do programs for young girls. Something to think about for the future.

One of our members asked a white lady if she was an ally. Which I thought was a good question that I had never thought about. She couldn’t understand why a white woman would want to join our organization. There are so many women’s running group. A member of 261 Fearless, came by our table and asked what do we do. I explained the impact of the intersections of race and gender. And yes, women need to be in these spaces and supportive, the the intersections of race makes our experiences in this running space unique. The 261 fearless lady told me that membership dues are $59 a year. I told her , we are dues free and social class and access impacts our communities differently.

She just listened. Not sure if she agreed or not but I know I made her think.

We had a lot of traffic at our tent. We talked with several African-American women and black women who are members but are not active or women who never heard of us and wanted to join. Others, we are just visiting and they asked if there was a BGR chapter in their city. I glad we were there.

I did leave the tent to cheer and send off our ladies that were running in the race. All in all it a great day of networking, community building, and supporting each other