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Fitness in Color


Mar 23, 2021

Advocating for racial representation, equity, and inclusion in the running community.

Carolyn Su first got into running to try and control an eating disorder. She used it as a weight loss tool and spent her early running days counting calories against miles run. It wasn't until much later that she started to enjoy the sport and find other runners she could connect with.

As Carolyn became deeply immersed in the online running culture, she started to notice a pattern; most of the runners featured and reposted on Instagram pages, interviewed for podcasts, reported in publications, and amplified across social channels were White and from affluent neighborhoods and backgrounds.

She started exploring hashtags like #asianrunners#myrunninghair, #nativewomenrunning, and #latinosrun to find runners who looked like her and that she could relate to. The more she researched the more people she found that inspired her.

In 2018, Carolyn started featuring runners of color, first on her own Instagram account, tagging the posts under #diversewerun (a play on “united we stand”). Positive comments and messages rolled in and she decided to create the platform Diverse We Run as its own IG handle. 

Carolyn uses the platform to write weekly features of Black, Indigenous, and Runners of Color, to advocate for racial representation, equity, and inclusion in the running community.

Carolyn's goal with Diverse We Run is to broaden perceptions of social norms, to challenge runners to discover new runners to follow and share about, and to connect with runners whose life experiences hail from different cultures.

We also talk about the current rise in Hate crimes in the Asian American & Pacific Islander community.

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