Correction: The initial version of this story incorrectly referred to the Long Beach Running Club as the Long Beach Run Club twice. It has since been corrected.
Long Beach’s largest free run club gathered in numbers at the 39th annual Long Beach marathon during which participants ran 26.2 miles through the scenic downtown area on Sunday.
Bildad Bildad, a member of the club who has been running with the club for five years says that mental preparation is just as important as the physical.
“Self-talk is important”, Bildad said. “I say things like ‘You’re capable. You’re here.’”
Like many of the other members of the Long Beach Running Club, Bildad has his sights set for larger marathons to come, such as the Boston marathon in Spring 2024 for which he would need a time of 3:10.00 to qualify.
Bildad finished the Long Beach Marathon at 3:24.00, close to his goal of 3:20.00 and not too far off from where he needs to be to qualify for the Boston marathon.
Aside from pushing their physical endurance, runners seek out the run club because of the sense of community.
“It is my hobby now but running with these guys is also pretty cool,” said Eric Santos, another member.
Originally a solo runner, he sought out the club for the sense of accountability he has gained from his peers and the joy of being surrounded by like- minded individuals. Santos has been running with the club for about eight years now.
Santos, who is training for an ultra marathon (50 miles) had a slightly more lax approach to the marathon. He kept a steady pace to avoid injury, stopping to take salt tablets for cramps and biofreeze for his knees when needed, ultimately letting his body guide him toward the finish line.
Santos finished with a time of 4:35.00.
In addition to participants running the marathon, Long Beach Running Club’s supporters showed up in full force for a cheerleading station at Ocean and Junipero at mile mark 23.
The strong sense of support and community is what keeps the club’s founder, Gus Esparza, motivated to continue facilitating meetings.
Esparza no longer runs due to an injury he sustained in 2019, just before the pandemic.
With run clubs no longer meeting at the height of 2020, Esparza took up cycling and hasn’t looked back.
His main motivator for continuing with the run club is seeing their LBRC logo on t-shirts all over the world.
LBRC runners have traveled as far as Japan, Boston, Berlin, and New York representing the brand.
“It’s a little more than social for us,” Esparza said. “We meet at Home Depot, not a bar, and that’s on purpose. We’re here to run.”
The sentiment of pushing oneself was palpable among the thousands of runners who showed up to Sunday’s race.
Jason Yang, of Los Angeles, was the first to finish the marathon with a time of 2:27:04, just 27 minutes short of the world record of 2:00.00 recently broken by Kenyan Kelvin Kiptum in Chicago the weekend prior.
As the Long Beach Running Club continues to grow and inspire, it’s clear that their story is far from reaching the final chapter.