Andy Shepperd, founder and executive director of Project Outrun, and Courtney Ruggaber, the director of operations and communications, join the interview to discuss their running journeys as well as their work at the running-oriented nonprofit. Project Outrun supports pediatric cancer patients and their families by using a ‘run in the recovery road’ metaphor, providing new, custom shoes for afflicted children and raising money through events and athletes representing the organization in races. Shepperd has applied his tenets as a runner to be able to connect with pediatric cancer families and join their ‘team,’ growing the organization from a single fundraiser to a cross-country effort in 7 years. Meeting at running club, Ruggaber joined the cause with Shepperd during Covid to digitally build out the nonprofit to access and onboard families beyond the greater Cleveland area, where shoes, or ‘Outruns,’ have been provided in all 50 states. Ruggaber reflects one of the most rewarding moments of her life, a 50-mile race where she wore the shoes of one of the Project Run athletes, Paisley, a leukemia patient, and Shepperd recalls organizing a group run in recognition of a patient and sharing his love for running with his son.
“All of these tenets that I learned from running, I encapsulated into a foundation, and it gives me the ability to go into any room, with any pediatric cancer family in this country, and immediately drop that wall, and join their team, utilizing the metaphor of the run.”
Date: February 14th, 2024
Keywords: Running | Akron | Project Outrun | Akron Children’s Hospital | Shoes | Burning River | Community
Transcript
Hannah Clark: This is an oral history interview for the South Carolina Honors College thesis project, More than the Mileage: Finding Community and a Sense of Place through Recreational Distance Running, documenting the perspectives and experiences of recreational distance runners. This is Hannah Clark, the date is February 14th, 2024, and today I am interviewing Andy and Courtney virtually via Zoom. I’m in Columbia, South Carolina, and Andy and Courtney are in West Akron, Ohio at the Project Outrun office. Would you both start by giving me your full names and spelling them for me?
Andy Shepperd: Andy Shepperd, A-N-D-Y S-H-E-P-P-E-R-D.
Courtney Ruggaber: Courtney Ruggaber, I know it’s the worst. C-O-U-R-T-N-E-Y, and then Ruggaber, R-U-G-G-A-B-E-R.
HC: Okay, awesome. We’re going to start with some background, just to lay the foundation, where were you both born, and if different, where do you currently reside?
AS: I was born in Akron, Ohio, and I reside in Akron, Ohio (unintelligible at 1:00).
CR: I changed, I was born in Canton, Ohio, raised there, and then now as an adult, I live in Norton, Ohio, which is not far from Akron.
HC: Got it. Perfect. If you don’t mind, can you guys tell me a little bit about your family? And you can go as in depth, or as much as you want, just to kind of lay the framework.
AS: Yeah, very working class family. [I] grew up in Bath, Ohio, sort of a higher-end area. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t know, what else about my family? Two, I have a sister, we- sports was very important to us. I was a big basketball player. Yeah.
CR: Were you a runner when you were younger?
AS: [I was] not, no, thank you.
CR: You’re welcome.
AS: Yeah, not a runner at all. Yeah, basically pretty normal. Pretty standard upbringing. I have a sister, yeah, I don’t know.
CR: Yeah, a similar- I was raised in a similar socioeconomic situation to Andy, but in Jackson, which is down in Canton. I have a mom and a dad. My mom is a 4’11” Korean woman, and my dad is a tall white man, (laughs), and I fell somewhere in the middle. In terms of sports, I always played team sports, but was never a runner, so I played lacrosse and volleyball and all the things, but no runners in our family, and I found running as an adult. So [I] loved sports and loved team sports, but never was a runner.
AS: And actually, so I guess that’s interesting. No one’s ever asked me about my childhood. So growing up, again, I played every sport, but my sister was an amazing runner, sprinter, track athlete, long jumper, all of those things, and so I never wanted to be compared to her, so I actively avoided running because I was like, ‘she fast.’ (Laughs).
CR: Not trying to be shamed by your sister.
AS: I remember so many times, going into high school, her track coaches being like, ‘you’ll never be as good of an athlete as your sister.’ I was like, ‘shots fired.’ I ended up being as good an athlete, but just in different sports. But I avoided the running, and then I found it again, which was good. Yeah.
HC: Okay, perfect. So going off of that, I guess, how long have you both been runners, and what started or inspired your start into running, I guess?
CR: You go ahead.
AS: Okay, so, I played basketball my whole life. I got done with college, and I was still playing basketball, still training some kids, doing all of those things, and then I kept playing in pickup leagues and kept getting hurt, dinged up, and I was in my early thirties and I was like, ‘I should probably stop playing.’ My knees are still good, I did not have any major injuries, I should probably get away from this. We moved into our house, my wife and I were having a baby, and we moved into our house, and we live on the Akron Marathon route, so I was like, ‘Hmm, I should probably run the Akron marathon at some point, but to do that I should probably start running.’ So I was like, ‘let’s try this, let’s start this. A real goal of mine is going to be to run.’ So, I started running, and then from there, it just kind of took off. So I probably started running about 11 years ago.
CR: For me, like I said, I found running as an adult. So prior to that, I was really big into CrossFit and all of those things, and I always tell people CrossFit gave me the courage to try running because running seemed so daunting. So, I never had any intentions of being a runner, but a good friend of mine got pregnant and her and her husband were then given the news that their baby was going to have a lot of complications in utero, and then immediately following birth, and would then be at Akron Children’s for an undetermined amount of time after they gave birth, and so following- her name’s Emilyn, so after Emilyn was born, and they had this amazing experience at Akron Children’s, my friend Jenna decided to form an Akron Marathon relay team, Akron Marathon ties…
AS: Holy cow.
CR: …to give back to the hospital, to raise money and give back ’cause they had such an incredible experience, as does everyone with Akron Children’s. And so that was 2017, and she reached out to me and said, ‘well, Courtney, you do CrossFit, do you want to run?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know how those things align, at all, but whatever you need, I’ll support you.’ And so they gave me the hardest leg, up Sand Run [part of Akron Marathon route], they gave me the hardest leg, which ‘thanks fam,’ and that was it for me. That was the first race I ever did, I had no experience with running, I trained all summer to run five and a half miles, which seemed so crazy. That was seven years ago, and then things really took off. It escalated very quickly from there. So yeah, that was seven years ago.
HC: Okay, nice. I love the Akron connection from both.
AS: Yeah.
HC: I kind of went out of order, but going back one step for both of you. What are your current roles and occupations?
CR: Well, we work together here at Project Outrun headquarters. Andy, I won’t really answer for him, but he’s the founder and executive director, and I’m the director of operations and communications, and do you want to, for the recording, tell her what we do?
AS: Yeah. So the work we do here is we join families across the country, pediatric cancer families, in the fight. We join teams, we provide new shoe smiles, medal moments and finish line feelings to kids that deserve it the most. We utilize the metaphor of the ‘run in the recovery road’ to help encourage kids along their pediatric cancer journey, and it’s so funny, the gift- all of the things that I’ve learned from running, 11 years ago, kind of led me to this place. The gift that running has given me, and the ability to join a community, and to build a network, and to utilize- what we do literally, but what metaphorically we provide for our families, has been so life changing. And the idea that taking that one step out of my door, led me to this journey, I would’ve never known what running could do, what the metaphor of running could do, or any of these things. I would’ve never participated in the race that spawned this event had I not started that- taking that first step. So running has given me almost everything, which is crazy. It’s crazy.
CR: We met at running club, and he was talking about Project Outrun, and we didn’t know each other, and then that started our friendship and then that’s what started me working here. I was a teacher for 10 years and I left teaching and came here. If I didn’t run, we never would’ve met, we wouldn’t became friends. He wouldn’t have allowed me to help him build this thing.
AS: Yeah. Hannah, can I tell you- let me know when you’d like the origin of this foundation, because it’s a running story, it’s a community-building story, and it kind of speaks to all of the things that you’re trying to, kind of, accomplish, so let me know when you want that, because again, that’s really my running story.
HC: Yeah, go for it. Yeah, tell me about…
AS: Okay, so again, 11 years ago, I start casually running. I pick up some running friends, we’re going around some trails and doing this, that, and the other, and there’s a local 5K called Kylie Rose’s Run. And I’m like, ‘Hey, I’ve been running a little bit, let’s go rock this 5K.’ So when I go there, I see this little girl named Kylie Rose Jacobs. She is six at the time, and she has battled pediatric cancer for the first time, and she ended up battling for three years straight. But I went and ran this race, thought it was amazing, thought the family was incredible, and I kind of made a mental note to come back every year and check on this little girl. I had two boys then, and when you have kids, all kids become your kids. So I’m like, ‘I’m going to come back and check on her.’ So every year I would go back, and three years in a row, she went from relapse, to relapse, to relapse. So she was in remission, then she got cancer again, in remission, so I was like, this was such an arduous, long journey for her, and I looked at her like she was my own, and I thought, ‘what would I do if it were my son in the fight?’ And I was doing really creative things for my family all of the time, and I thought maybe there’s something I can do for her to help encourage her along the way. So I’d always been a huge sneakerhead, and I had always utilized the Nike by You Builder to create really cool shoes with my son’s names on them, and I was like, maybe I could do something for her, where I take her 5K colors and logo, and create a really cool shoe for her. So I put a pin in that, and was like, ‘when am I going to do this? How am I going to do it? It’s kind of weird.’ But at Christmas time, I found out she was having this really big surgery, and I was like, ‘let’s do it.’ I’m going to go on. So I went on the Nike Builder, and I was able to find the perfect template ever to match her 5K colors and logo, and I created these shoes. They’re actually in my car right now, ’cause I took them to a meeting last week, but I created these incredible shoes that matched her 5K colors and logo, and had no idea how to tell this family that I did not know that I created their daughter’s shoes, ’cause it’s kind of strange. And I’m like best friends with her best friend- with his best friend, Eric Jacobs the dad, so we’re like best-friends-in-law. So I had sort of a connection, but still not enough where I’m like, ‘here’s some shoes.’ So the first thing that came to my mind was to text them that we were huge fans of Kylie and that when she outruns cancer, she has to have the right shoes, and their response to that was so moving that my wife and I took our Christmas cash up to Akron Children’s Hospital, and started this thing called Project Outrun. Now, the reason I’m kind of telling you this, and the reason it was a cultural thing is that I understood the idea of what running means. Running’s not- right? It’s like a mindset. It’s like, but then once you get past a place, it becomes so therapeutic and there’s a peace, and a calm, and a beauty to it, and a community to it. I look at my running friends, some of my best friends are the people that I never look in the eye. I just look at- we’re side to side. So when I thought about this, doing this, designing shoes for kids at the hospital, I thought, how do I encapsulate it so it has meaning, so it has context? So I’m not just going up there and being like, ‘you’ve got cancer, here are some shoes!’ Makes no sense, right? So in pursuing it, I extended the metaphor out. The first time that we went up to the Akron Children- to Akron Children’s Hospital, we went with a swag bag. So all of our kids get swag bags. Will you grab the stuff? [to Courtney, who brings the bag over] They all got a bag. You’re going to a race, you get a bag. They all get a Project Outrun t-shirt [that] says, ‘I’m not sick, but my shoes are.’ They all get a finisher’s medal, then they all get a finish line that says, ‘I am finished with ____ ‘ and I tell ’em, ‘your shoes are free, but they cost a goal. I don’t care what the goal is, big or small.’ So these are some of the stuff, some of the things that they get. So they get this really cool t-shirt, I know your dad’s got the gear, ‘Faster Every Day.’ We’re going to send you one of these, by the way, and some socks. They get some socks that say ‘Faster Every Day,’ they get a medal to rock around their neck, they get a finish line. All of the things that we think we run for, we don’t really run for these things, these are just parts of it, right? But it starts to build out, it started to build out the idea of like, I’m- we’re going to give you shoes, these are shoes to get well in, these aren’t shoes to be sick in, these are shoes to help you heal. These are shoes that enable me to come in a room- I’m a stranger, but all of a sudden I’m on your team, with just this gift, and I’m going to lean on the ideology and the things that I’ve learned from being a runner, the idea of getting metaphorically faster every day, viewing- using sport to heal, having the mentality of, every single day, let’s stay in the mile that we’re in. All of these tenets that I learned from running, I encapsulated into a foundation, and it gives me the ability to go into any room, with any pediatric cancer family in this country, and immediately drop that wall, and join their team, utilizing the metaphor of the run. And I’m just like, it’s the coolest thing ever to me because everybody understands it. So that’s really my running journey, if I could do it in a story. Yep. Thank you.
HC: No, that’s awesome. To build on that, can you, either of you, speak to kind of the progression of Project Outrun through the years, and the growth you’ve seen with your story and what you’re trying to do?
AS: Absolutely. So when I started this, my wife and I went up with our Christmas cash, and we had enough to do shoes for 17 kids, and we got all done with that, and the kids loved it, the hospital loved it, and they said, ‘we want you to do this more,’ and I said, ‘that’s great, well, we’re out of money,’ and they’re like, ‘throw a fundraiser.’ So we threw a fundraiser, and raised like $15,000, and I thought that was all the money in the world, and they got a video out to Nike, and we flew out there and met with them, and I told them all of the things that I wanted to accomplish. Back then, it seemed so daunting, and I had no idea what I was doing, and then seven years later to see where we are, I’m just always amazed and so proud. But at that point, we were only in one hospital. So I was in Akron Children’s, I was providing the shoes, and the swag, and the support to our local Akron-based families. As the project continued to develop, we started onboarding new hospitals, the local area hospitals, Cleveland Clinic, University Hospital, we started onboarding some of the other local in-state hospitals. We got some partnerships with some out of state, the Iowa area set up a chapter, but everything was very much- we had to have boots on ground. We had to be in your community, we had to be able to access your families, we had to design with the kiddos, and then Covid hit, so then that became impossible. And then when Covid hit, we brought Courtney in, because I was like, ‘we have to build this out digitally, everything is way too analog, we need to be able to get with families all across the country and provide our service.’ So Courtney built out the entire digital framework for how we can access families, and how we can onboard families, and how we can connect with families all across the country. So since that, in the last six months, or nine months, of last year, we’ve worked with kids at 150 different hospital systems all across the United States…
CR: All 50 states.
AS: We provided Outruns [custom shoes] for kids in all 50 states. We do about 1200 pairs of shoes per year for Outrun athletes across the country, it’s about 50% of the pediatric cancer diagnosis population, which every single year we want to do more. Our goal is 10,000 pairs, which is the number of pediatric cancer diagnoses in this country, that we’re actively working every single day to join as many teams in the fight as possible. Again, using that metaphor of outrunning, and the metaphor of ‘sport to heal,’ and the metaphor of faster every day, building community through that, but we actually live the literal interpretation of it. Our running makes us stronger organizationally, because we’re able to take that and say to them, ‘no, no, no, we actually log these miles’ and when we log them, we log them with you on our hearts and in our heads, for sure.
HC: No, I love that. And I was going to ask right after, where do you see it progressing, but you guys have that goal set and ready to go, so.
AS: That’s it.
HC: If you don’t mind, I wanted to ask you guys about your individual running journeys a little bit too. Besides Project Outrun, are you guys involved with any running groups where you live, just the day-to-day training? Or do you guys have any training right now that you’re working towards?
CR: Yeah, I would say, because I don’t have children, I have much more flexibility of my time. So I consider myself to be a running social butterfly. So I’m in a season right now where if anybody needs a running buddy, and they just want to keep it chill, I’ll pretty much go anywhere. So I frequent a lot of running groups, which I think I put on that document that you sent out. I filled out…
AS: You have space, like to put all your running groups?
CR: I only put two, but- so there’s a Portage Lakes Running Club, so PLX and a PLX North, and a lot of our friends are within those two running groups. But outside- of people I’ve met in those groups that maybe don’t attend running club regularly have become our close friends, and so I just run and we do coffee dates, and all the things, but I’m not training for anything now. Last year was a really big goal setting year for me in terms of running, and I had the honor of running for this organization again. So I ran my first marathon as a fundraiser for Project Outrun when Andy and I first met, and I was just so in awe of what was taking place at Project Outrun. I didn’t know Andy, and we weren’t really friends yet, but I knew I was going to weasel my way in. So I was like…
AS: The diabolical plan…
CR: I was like, I’m coming!
AS: …to get underpaid at a project nonprofit. You did it. (Laughs).
CR: I will work for free.
AS: Congratulations.
CR: So yeah, so the first year, so 2020, I signed up for a marathon before Covid was a thing, just the Akron Marathon, and they didn’t have the event that year, they said it was going to be virtual. And I was like, well, if this is going to be a year of setting a big goal, I want it to be beyond myself. Which is what I think really makes running meaningful is when you can make it- it can be selfish, it can be all about you and not selfish in the negative sense, but it’s so meaningful when it’s beyond yourself, and so it was really important to me to have a mission that felt very important to me. So I asked Andy, pre-friendship, can I use my first marathon, which is virtual, to fundraise for Project Outrun? And so that was the beginning and then that’s what turned into me actually working here was us building that relationship. But then this past year, I had the honor of running for this project again, and I ran the Burning River 50-Mile Ultramarathon, and got to be joined at the feet with one of our local Outrun athletes, her name’s Paisley, and she was with me in my heart every step, and it just made it a world of difference.
AS: She was waiting for her at the 50-mile mark, and then Courtney gave her the ‘Outruns of Outruns-‘ We work with a sneaker artist that does all the Major League Baseball All-Star cleats, and he creates- essentially their ‘shoe story’ is depicted, like their journey. Paisley is a leukemia survivor, doing so well, and all of the little details that were a part of her journey are represented on her shoes. They were really amazing. So basically Courtney crosses the finish line and gets Paisley with these shoes. I mean, it’s one of the coolest things that we get to do every year at Burning River, it’s a campaign we do every single year, and it’s just remarkable. It’s so powerful, because you have an athlete that is going above and beyond on that running journey, and then waiting for them on the other side is another athlete that has overcome such an incredible journey. It’s like the merger of those worlds and the connectivity, like Courtney wears her shoes, so she’s wearing Paisley’s shoes as she crosses the [finish line] and gifts Paisley those. It’s the best, the absolute best.
CR: I’m, I’m going to cry.
AS: Yeah, it’s neat. So fun.
CR: It’s the best, and one of the most fulfilling things I’ve ever done in my entire life, and just to have that moment with Paisley and to carry her with me, it’s just absolutely unreal. So this year, I am taking a supporting role in all my friends’ goals.
AS: She’s getting married in…
CR: [I’m] getting married.
AS: …on April 20th.
HC: You know, casual, casual.
CR: Yeah, so we’re casual running this year.
(Laughter)
AS: And I’m officiating. (Unintelligible at 20:33).
CR: When I say running- when running built my current life, it really, truly did because Andy and I are besties now. I call him that, he tells me that, and that’s okay. But he’s like- literally, we made this [holds a fake ring box]. My fiancé and I proposed to him. They said, will you marry us?
AS: It was a hard yes. That was a hard yes. Yeah.
HC: That is awesome. Oh my god, yeah.
CR: The power of running!
HC: Yes. I have chills going from Paisley’s story, to that story, everything about it. Awesome.
AS: We got a lot going on. So for me, so I have three boys. I have an 11-year-old, a 7-year-old, and a 19 month old, and so my running is always interesting. I’m like the ultimate pacer. Anybody can call me anytime, any pace, any place, and I am like, ‘yep, got you there.’ Last year I had the honor of…
CR: Oh this?
AS: Yeah, I ran with the ‘running banana’ as he set the Guinness Book of World Records for the fastest half marathon time dressed as a piece of fruit at the Cleveland Marathon. Yeah, hilarious. I’ve never been- it was the funniest run ever because every place we turned, everyone was like- I was like, ‘this is hilarious.’ We turned down the home stretch and the entire gallery was like- I’m like, ‘I didn’t realize all I had to do was put on a running suit, and put on a fruit suit, and people just love you.’ It’s all it takes.
CR: It’s like a mascot.
AS: That’s it. So either way, so that was very cool. But the thing that I love the most is that I have an 11-year-old that- he’s not a sports- like my wife and I were athletes, and Griffin has never been in- he doesn’t want to take your ball. He’s not- he just doesn’t. It’s just not him. He doesn’t want to compete with other people, it’s just not in him, and I’m not going to force that upon him. But the thing that I told him was that ‘you need to know how to silence that head voice and listen to your heart.’ You need to overcome that. You need to understand what’s possible, and I always say that running is a key to that and a gateway to that. So when he was like eight or nine, I was like, ‘buddy, I want you to come out and run with me.’ He had never run a mile before, so that first mile was like 11:30, or whatever it was, and he was complaining the entire time. And I’m like, ‘buddy, I don’t want to hear you complain, we’re going to run, you’re going to learn to silence that voice, and I promise you it’s going to help you with every single thing in your life.’ Everything will become easier if you learn that your head will lie, but your heart will tell you the truth. So fast forward, he runs with me for six months, starts getting faster, starts loving it, starts showing up at races, starts doing races. Now, he’s such a great runner…
CR: He’s so good.
AS: …he loves running so much. Every single night I get home, and he’s like, ‘are we training?’ So I train- my 11-year-old trains me, basically. He takes me out, we do tempo runs, he’s an absolute joy and, he just is- he’s so grateful for that push through, and that’s the thing that I love about running. If you can get to that place, if you can get past that voice, there’s like this opportunity in front of you, right, and the coolest thing with him is that he’s very locked into the Outrun community, he knows so many of our stories, he’s been at so many events.
CR: He’s our greatest ambassador.
AS: He’s our greatest ambassador. Every single piece of his youth has centered around this organization. And he’ll go- he has a bib wall at the house, and I didn’t even realize. So he will take his bib from a race and he’ll write the story of the race, write his time, which is so cool. I love him. I know. I love him so much.
CR: He’s so thoughtful.
AS: And he has, I looked at his Outrun (unintelligible at 24:19) bib…
CR: Yeah.
AS: …and he has names, he has kids’ names, like Outrun kids’ names on his bib that he’s running for, and I never even saw it, ’cause he ran the race, he played the national anthem, ’cause he’s a crazy musician. He played the national anthem on his guitar, got- put it down, and hopped in our 5K…
CR: And smoked it.
AS: Yes, smoked it, right? And so I never saw his bib, and then he put it up on his wall and I looked at it and I’m like, ‘oh, he gets it.’ He understands that he’s running with these kids. So, running has done so much for him in terms of gifting him that- look, you don’t want to take somebody else’s ball, I get it. You don’t want to go tackle somebody, I get it. But he learned how to overcome that heart versus- the head versus heart voice, and he saw the opportunities, and that’s the greatest gift that you can give to your child is like, ‘let me show you what the benefit of overcoming that is.’ It’s liberating, right?
CR: Oh yeah, and I would say, just because I know he won’t do it for himself, but Andy is by far one of the most sacrificial runners. This man has not run a race for himself, in, the entire time I’ve known him. He literally runs for others and paces- people will call him, out of the blue, and be like, ‘Hey, I have this half marathon time goal,’ and he’s like, ‘I got you.’
AS: I got you.
CR: He’s paced many PRs [personal records] and many races.
AS: I love it. [It’s] my favorite. I feel like, I don’t know, there will be a day where I’m like, ‘all right, I’ll hammer down, let’s go.’ It’s just, to me, running has never been that. Running has been- it’s been a community. I’d rather- and I love seeing others- I don’t know. I don’t really have- I don’t, my personal goals involve others.
CR: I love crying at finish lines.
AS: Yeah, amen. That’s what I’m here to do. I’m here to say, ‘You have a goal, let me help you get it there, and let me have a great time while I’m doing it.’ So I love pacing. So Hannah, I know you’re fast, I know you run with your dad, you ever need a pacer, I’m your guy.
CR: I’ll cheerlead you from behind.
HC: There you go. I might have to take you up on that. And the father-child training sounds very familiar, that was…
AS: When did you start running?
HC: I want to say around middle school, seventh grade- seventh grade, eighth grade, I want to say. I was kind of on the lacrosse route, trying stuff like that, and I quickly found out it wasn’t for me (laughs). So that kind of led to the switch. But yeah, it’s been a really important part of my dad and I’s relationship, so I can definitely vouch for the benefit on the other side that you were…
AS: Isn’t it the best? To me, it’s the best. The miles go so fast, I get to look over and I’m not missing time. That’s the thing. If I’m going to do something, I’m just so cognizant of- how fast, you know- when you’re parenting, time goes so fast, the days are long, the years are short, that kind of a vibe. And I just love that I can get my miles in while spending time with my son, it’s the best.
HC: No, [I love it]. To kind of go back a little bit, can you walk me through the process of when someone is racing for a Project Outrun kid, someone that you’re supporting, how do they go through those steps to fundraise and be part of your guys’ organization? Just more from a technical standpoint.
AS: So, every campaign is different. So for instance, when your dad came to us, he obviously is really close with the Nemets [family my dad ran for], we’re extremely close with the Nemets. I didn’t intend this, I was at the hospital this morning, but I had Collin’s shirt on, and when he came to us, he didn’t specify that he wanted fundraising specifically for anything, he would’ve been fine with whatever, but I thought it was really important to tie him to Collin, and Collin had recently passed, and they got active cells from his tumor, which was remarkable because they hadn’t been able to access active cells from his type of cancer for, like, a hundred years or something crazy. And they sent ’em to this organization called A Gift from a Child, and we thought it was important to utilize our foundation to help kind of chase down a cure, send funding towards that organization that was doing some active work in that field, so when he came to us, we developed an entire campaign kind of tying him to that messaging, that community, and it was amazing, and your dad did an incredible job. But every runner, we kind of cater the campaign to what they’re trying to accomplish. So, everybody has different goals, everybody has a different running story- we generally will link them with a family, with an athlete, to give their community an overall idea of the work that we do, and the idea that you’re not fundraising for this kid, for this family, you’re fundraising for other kids to have this opportunity to join our Project Outrun family. And then we’ll build a specific campaign, a donor wall, so that it can be shared. We’ll add- Courtney does all the social media support, and then we give them all of the tools that they need and we say ‘you’re off to the races.’ And then generally, we just support them as much as we possibly can, give them all sorts of little activations to help with the fundraising, from swag gifts, to shoe raffles, to all sorts of things. But what we really love to do is when an athlete comes to us and says, ‘I want to run for you,’ rather than, it’s just like, ‘Here you go, here’s- get some miles donated.’ We like to learn about the runner, learn their running story, learn their why, so that- ’cause we’re all about- we’re storytellers. We love this story. And there’s nothing better than being on a run- and this is the first thing you do with anybody you run with. ‘So how’d you get into running? You never run with ’em?’ It’s like that thing, it’s like, you have to address it, you didn’t just wake up, and you didn’t roll out of the womb with some running shoes on, there’s a reason you’re toeing this line, you know? And I’m always like, ‘are we running towards some, we running from some?’ Why are we running?
CR: Because most humans are not willing to pursue discomfort, and running is kind of like the pursuit of discomfort, and then figuring out how you handle it, because it’s not always uncomfortable, but there’s discomfort at times. And so, I think the fact that we run, for fun, as humans is kind of funny, ’cause it used to be just, like, survival. A bear was chasing you, you run.
AS: Maybe we’ve just got a little bit too much flight in us. No fight, all flight. Got to get these miles out. (Laughs).
CR: I will say that, it’s interesting, and that’s why it’s funny to hear everybody’s running story, but also for our athletes that fundraise, or we call ‘running for the project,’ they come to us, multiple people every year. They reach out to us. We are never actively searching for them. And so that’s been really cool because we’ve been able to connect with people here locally and across the country that have wanted to run for the project, and then like he said, it gives us the opportunity to learn, okay, well how did this connect with you and why? And it’s just incredible.
AS: But this year- so our biggest restriction right now is we’re actively chasing so much funding because our application portal is just slammed. We can’t keep up with the capacity or the funding elements of it, so now we want to create those really unique, scalable models of what ‘running for the project’ looks like, and quick access to that on our sites. If you go to Project Outrun, ‘learn how to run for the project,’ what that means, ‘Meaningful Miles,’ all of those things package-able, so if you were to meet somebody and they were like, ‘oh, I’d really like to do that.’ Well, it doesn’t involve 15 emails, it’s like you can literally access our site, click on the link, send us an email over, we’ll set up a consult kind of a thing, because we know that there is definitely an audience for that, and that people- runners love to run for causes. They just do, and this is one that we utilize. There’s not many that are like, ‘Hey, we’re- all the stuff that you’re doing, we’re kind of utilizing that metaphor to help these kids heal,’ and it’s just very emblematic and symbolic, so it just kind of really resonates. It’s like, that is an untapped donor pool that we definitely need to dive into, because we don’t want to have to shut down our application portal because we’re underfunded.
HC: No, that makes sense. Definitely. I bet it’s very hard to pinpoint, but can you both describe to me a time where you felt especially proud or felt like, ‘wow, this is so rewarding,’ in recent history?
AS: Yeah. Mine’s not recent, well, it’s recent ish. Okay, so we sold a shoe with Nike. It’s up there. I should grab it, I’ll grab it really fast.
CR: I would offer, but you know [I can’t reach it]. I have, like, T-Rex arms. He’s like 6’4”, 6’5”, I’m 5’3” with T-Rex arms.
AS: [Shows shoe]. So in 2018, we sold this shoe with Nike- Kylie, the little girl- The best part of this story is the little girl I started this for is six years cancer free, doing so well, living her best life.
CR: She’s in high school now, right?
AS: Yeah, she’s a freshman.
CR: Yeah.
AS: So in 2018, she designed this shoe, it’s like an unreleased Peg [Nike Pegasus running shoe]. It’s got coral reef pattern, ’cause she wanted to be a marine biologist. I need to follow up, I haven’t asked her in two years. That changes.
CR: It does change.
AS: I think she still [wants to be a] marine biologist. It has her signature on the inside of the shoe. Super cool. So Nike let me sell it for a week, and we sold 600 pairs. They thought I would sell a hundred and we sold 600, and they sold out of everything, too. It was super cool. So all these people bought this shoe, we raised a bunch of money, everybody in this area had these shoes. And I was like, I want to make a really cool ‘Our Shoe Story’ video that showcases what this community did and how cool this whole story is, but I’m like, ‘how do I- I’m so tired of the big check presentations.’ Everybody just writes it. We got to figure that out. I’m thinking about a small check, so you’ve really got to look, tiny checks.
CR: Tiny checks. Those big checks cost like 200 bucks.
AS: Something counterculture, enough with the big check, there’s got to be something better. So I thought, what would be cooler would be either running what we raised, so we raised all this money, let’s run the distance in miles that we raised, like the financial [amount], we had to do meters, because miles, there were too many miles…
CR: Too many miles.
AS: …so we did meters. We did the conversion, and we started on the track of Kylie Rose’s run at Copley High School. And we started with my core running group, that I started running with, and we all had Project Outrun t-shirts, and I had a number on my chest of the first number in the dollar amount that we raised, and we ran four miles and we picked up more people that had bought the shoe, and we’re all in the Kylie’s, we’re all in the shoes. We picked up more people that had the shoes. And then one of the lead runners, it was like Kylie’s dad, had another number in the total, and there were, like, four more miles. And then Kylie’s mom has another number, and then we run four more miles, and we’re picking up runners, and runners, and shoes, and bright neon shirts, and then we roll into Akron Children’s Hospital, where I threw a ‘Bought a Pair’ party, so if you bought a pair, you’ve got to come to this party, bring your family at Akron Children’s Hospital. So we ran, I think it was just, 18 miles to the people that started it, ’cause the meters was like 40,000 or whatever it was, and by the time we got done, we started- oh yeah, 27,264 meters. So, we started with five people on the track at Akron Children’s at five o’clock in the morning, and when we finished it, we had run 18 miles and picked up a hundred people all in neon shirts, and Kylie was the last person that joined us to do the total, and then we ran through this finish line at Akron Children’s and had a party with, like, 400 people at Akron Children’s. And that is when I said, ‘running can do some really incredible things.’ But I want to tell you this, I didn’t have Courtney then, I logistically planned all of this, t-shirt coordination, people- It was to think, to even try to pursue that now I’d be not a chance.
CR: He’s selling himself short. A, [he] definitely could carry this on his back. If he had to, which he shouldn’t have to, but he could. And he did for a long time. He really, truly- and still does. So, I’m very grateful to be here, but he could absolutely do this as a one-man-band if he had to, which hopefully he doesn’t ever have to.
AS: Never. But that was my proudest moment as a runner, because I was surrounded by all of these people who had given back, this kiddo that had survived pediatric cancer, like the crowning moment of it, and just like, have you ever- if you get a chance to watch Our Shoe Story, it’s on our website, it chronicles that, it’s very cool. And you’ll be like…
CR: It’s seven and a half minutes long and you will cry.
AS: …You’ll cry. But you’ll also be like, ‘oh, that thing he talked about, I totally get it now.’
CR: Yeah, definitely get it.
AS: Yours has to be Burning River.
CR: Oh yeah. Yeah. I mean obviously I did a lot of training for it, but, it was an unknown I had never stepped into. I had done a couple of- I had done three or four 50Ks, a couple of them were during my training. I was still pretty new to trail running, and my wonderful fiancé would just let me go out on Saturdays for hours and hours of training. Like wonder-
AS: Courtney? (Laughs).
CR: She’ll be home, dirty, probably bleeding. But yeah, Burning River was just an incredible day of being in your body, but outside of your body, within yourself, outside of yourself. It was just such a magical experience, and the big- I’m going to not cry…
AS: Don’t you dare. Not on Valentine’s Day.
CR: So, one of the things that Paisley loves the most is mushrooms. Not necessarily eating mushrooms, she just- the girl loves mushrooms.
AS: Yeah. I don’t think she even eats them, I think she just likes mushrooms.
CR: She loves- well so…
AS: She’s three by the way.
CR: She’s three, and her mom is one of the most beautiful souls, and when we had our initial conversation to talk about Project Outrun, she talked about how Paisley was diagnosed so young, that by the time that she kind of came through that, she had never been outside and played in the dirt. And so, when she was finally able to play outside in the dirt, and had seen a mushroom, it was like life changing, and so that’s where the love of mushrooms came. And I kid you not, on that day, on those trails that I had trained on for a long time, I had never seen so many mushrooms. They were, like, lining the course. Everywhere I looked, and in the hairiest part of when I was struggling the most, just drained, I looked around and it was rows of mushrooms, so along both sides of me, and just stopped and cried. Like, looked around, cried, had a moment. And so that day was just incredible, and yeah, it’s just the best. That was the best.
HC: That’s beautiful. Chills once again over [here].
(Laugher).
CR: I was looking for a turtle, because she also loves turtles. (Unintelligible at 39:25). Shut it down.
AS: If there was a turtle perched on a mushroom, it would be over. Done.
HC: The last- I mean, what you guys have said so far has reflected a lot of how running is so incorporated in your life, but I guess my last question for both of you is just overall, in your own words, how has running impacted your life?
AS: Well, I mean, yeah, in my own words, how has running impacted my life? (Pauses at 39:57). Running? So we call it our ‘fast family,’ and I think that that’s emblematic of what running community is. It’s- if you run a mile with someone, if you take that first [step], instantaneously, you kind of become fast family. It’s like you exponentially increase the ability to connect. And I really do believe it’s because those endorphins, whatever that is, whatever drops that wall and allows you to be vulnerable, and I think a lot of it does have to do with that you’re not eye to eye, but you’re stride for stride, there’s something about that. The cadence, the miles, the hard work, the camaraderie, it drops the wall and enables you to connect, and that connection doesn’t stop when you stop running, right. My best- one of the most beautiful things that you can do too is when you haven’t run with somebody for a while, and then you run with them again, you’re like, ‘this was cool.’ I don’t know what it is. Again, there’s something about it, that once you become fast family, and it just enables you to some amazing, amazing community.
CR: Yeah, I’m just thinking, [I’m] getting married, been working on my vows, and I feel the same way about my fiancé as I do about running, and that both brought so much abundance into my life. Just like he said, being vulnerable is super uncomfortable. Just like running, it can be super uncomfortable. But something about signing up to be in discomfort in the company of others also allows you to be vulnerable, and especially when I’ve run with women, that I might not know very well, the ability to say things you would never talk to people about over a cup of coffee, you will say to them on the first time you’ve ever run with them.
AS: A million percent.
CR: It’s- you’re like, ‘I’m oversharing, but I’m not, ’cause I’m running,’ it’s totally different.
AS: Totally true.
CR: So, I will say that running drastically changed my life, and brought me the most abundance, and looking at our guest list on our wedding, the running- because I segmented it, the running part of our guest list is the longest part of our guest list. We have over 50 people that we’ve run with, we’ve shared miles with, we’ve shared blood, sweat, tears, and magical moments and meaningful miles. That’s the biggest part of our guest list. So it just, yeah, it brought abundance into my life for sure.
HC: Well, thank you both for those answers and just overall, thank you so much for taking the time to share about your awesome story and the work you’re doing over there. I knew a little bit through my dad’s experience with it, but I really, really am appreciative that I got to hear in-depth from both of you about just the really crazy awesome things that you guys are doing, so thanks again for your time.
CR: Absolutely.