It’s been a while since I’ve penned an open letter to you all. Lots of things have happened over the past couple of months both positively and negatively as we now live in a country that has become even more difficult to navigate, even more so for women. We’ll get to that eventually but first I’d like to focus on the positive. Mid Strike Magazine is approaching its second year. July 27th, 2022, we’ll be two years young, it’s amazing and it’s something quite honestly that I knew would happen but not to this extent.
In June 2020 my feelings were, my run community needed to be better represented, we needed to have an avenue that represented what our true community was about and what it represented not only as runners but as a people. I was tired of seeing online articles of runners and people I couldn’t relate to, runners who dedicate their lives to training full time while obtaining Olympic style results, to me I could not relate to this, what I could relate to be the everyday runner that is diverse. That represents the communities that I/we are from, communities that represent our struggles, wins, losses, racism, gentrification, excessive policing, and most of all having a small fear of running while being black. These were all issues that larger publications failed to speak to, and it was something I wanted Mid Strike to represent, something those everyday runners could relate to and gain inspiration from every time an article was read, for them to know that these are not only things that you may struggle with but we all do.