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Read the press release here.

Running Group Aims to Connect New Residents and Life-Long Harlemites

 The group, Harlem Run, meets up every Monday and Thursday on 125th Street.
Harlem Run
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HARLEM — Every Monday a diverse mix of native Harlemites and newcomers get together for a run in what has become the neighborhood's most popular — and most public — fitness club.

About 25 members of Harlem Run gather at 125th Street across from the Rite Aid on Lenox Avenue — sometimes they run a mile around Central Harlem, sometimes they run four miles in Central Park. On Monday they ran a 5K.

“The first couple of months it was just me and my friend,” said Alison Desir, who started the group in 2013. “To be fair we started in the coldest months of the year.”

But after a while word spread and the small group grew. Today, the group is the largest and most active group in the neighborhood with between 20 and 30 people showing up for each event, Desir said. They have 1000 followers on Facebook.

Harlem Run's Harlem 5K
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DNAinfo/Gustavo Solis

The group has allowed native Harlemites and people who moved into the neighborhood a few months ago to interact.

“As it’s developed I didn’t want it to be a group of gentrifiers,” Desir said. “[Running] breaks the ice. What’s even cooler now is seeing pictures of people hanging out or hearing people make plans with people they otherwise wouldn't know.”

She has seen people sitting in their stoops cheer them as Harlem Run passes their block and even join them on their runs. She has also seen transplants develop a vested interest in Harlem, she said.

Dion Rabouin, a Harlem resident and editor for the International Business Times, was looking for ways to volunteer at a local community health center and ended up getting connected to Harlem Run. Like many new runners, he didn’t know what to expect.

"I thought there'd be more people from [the community center] here," he said.

Instead, the people who joined were parents, college students, young professionals, city workers, doctors, lawyers and everything in between. The group of about 25 strangers makes up Harlem Run.

The organization has helped people lose weight and live healthier lives. On Father's Day, one of their members ran a mile with his kids after losing 75 pounds. At the start of every run the group forms a large circle and each runner introduces themselves to the group. To avoid taking over the entire sidewalk, they run in twos.

Although some of the members compete in marathons, Harlem Run is not meant to be an intimidating running group. Their runs are broken up into different pace groups and there is always a member in the back to make sure no one gets left behind.

Raydime Polanco, had been running for about a year before she joined Harlem Run. She would usually run in the summer and do some sort of indoor workout in the winter.

But after seeing the group of runners last winter, she decided to join them. She was a little intimidated at first but now she rarely misses a week, even in below-freezing temperatures.

“We were running and the wind was just on our faces and I remember a lot of us having scarves,” she said. “We pulled shirts over our faces, we called ourselves the running ninjas.”