How Sharon Tejada Went From a ‘One and Done’ Bucket List Marathoner to a Philly Run Club Community Leader

Running a marathon was on the bucket list. It was a challenge to accomplish, check off, and move on from.

After Sharon Tejada crossed the finish line of the San Francisco Marathon, that was it. Her running journey began and ended with that race.

But then, the marathon announced a special medal for its 40th anniversary.

Sharon signed up.

For the first few years of her running journey, Sharon says she found training plans online and ran alone, never with any of the run clubs near her home in California. She was chasing medals, but she wasn’t particularly enjoying the experience.

When Sharon moved to Philadelphia, all of that changed.

‘Something Is Different Here.’

Philadelphia’s run club community is expansive, and as Sharon explains, runners often jump around between run clubs throughout the week and cheer each other on at local races. It was in Philly’s inclusive, community-first run club scene where she says she finally began to enjoy running.

She quickly found a home at Philadelphia Runner, the local running store, where she works part-time and mentors runners through the company’s training program, Team Philly Race Training. She’s also on the leadership teams for both Queer Run and Women in Ultrarunning.

During the 9-to-5, she works as a project manager at Penn Center for Health Justice, a job she loves. But her involvement in the running community and desire to help others achieve their race goals prompted her to start coaching on the side.

Through PWRHER’D’s Game Changer program, which supports women of color in becoming run coaches and setting up their coaching businesses, Sharon recently gained her run coach certification and launched Purple Runner Performance. She’s currently coaching her first five runners toward the Philadelphia Marathon this November.

“I’ve run the Philly Marathon every year that I’ve lived here,” Sharon says. “This year, for the first time, I’m going to not run it so I can cheer for them all.”

On her own race calendar, she’s training for the New York City Marathon. And while staying involved and giving back to the Philly running community is her main focus these days, Sharon continues to find motivation in chasing great race medals.

After New York, she says, “I’ll do the Frosty Looper for fun, and also for a medal, because I ran Loopy Looper. If you run Loopy Looper and Frosty Looper, you get a cool challenge medal.”

Below, Sharon shares more on the Philly running community and its annual Mayor’s Cup run club competition, her involvement with Queer Run, and PWRHER’D’s Game Changers program.

What changed in your running journey when you moved to Philadelphia?

Sharon Tejada: When I ran the Philly Marathon for the first time in 2021, the vibes just felt different because there were so many run clubs, or there were so many groups that seemed to identify as run clubs, that were out on the course, cheering for and supporting runners of all shapes and sizes and speeds.

In 2022, I started looking for run groups, and just knew that the social barrier was high for me …. I found Team Philly Race Training, which is the training program out of the Philadelphia Runner store. At the time, I think it was $100 for the season, which was affordable enough that I could do it, but enough in my head that when Wednesday rolled around and I didn’t actually want to go talk with people who I didn’t really know, I was like, ‘But you paid the $100. You have to go.’

They sucked me in because everyone in Philly is really, really lovely and really delightful and really welcoming, from what I’ve been able to experience.

Philly, geographically, is big, but the community is small, and everyone knows each other …. I would check out other run clubs, and through those run clubs, would meet other people. I just found that the community here was really amazing.

No one here is territorial. No one here is like, ‘Well, my run club runs at this time, and this other run club does, too, so you have to choose between the two.’ People will hop between run clubs.

Every August, we have an event called Mayor’s Cup, and it’s essentially like a cross-country meet between all the different run clubs. It’s points-based, so it doesn’t matter individually what your time is. Whatever you’re finishing in, you earn points for your team, and then all the Philadelphia-area run clubs try to get the most points.

As you see people in Mayor’s Cup, it’ll be like, ‘Oh, awesome, it’s nice to see you! Who are you running with today?’ Because every person could be running with five to 10 different groups.

Among the running groups you’re involved in, you sit on the leadership team for Queer Run. When did you join, and what makes this group special to you?

Sharon Tejada: I ran with them for the first time in August 2022. Once I join a community I like, I kind of immediately jump all in. I became part of the leadership in September 2022.

The mission is to create a safe and inclusive space for movement for queer folks and allies, and that’s something that really resonated with me. Philly has a couple queer groups. There’s LezRun, which was created by C.C. Téllez, [who’s] doing amazing things in the community. And then there’s also Philly Front Runners.

We were looking to create a space that brought in more of the queer community and was a more diverse space. We weren’t trying to take space away from Front Runners or LezRun, but we saw a gap.

Our leadership team has grown, and also our group has really grown, especially in the last year. I think for the first year, our Monday night run, which is our flagship run, probably had 20 to 30 people, depending on the season. We’ve now grown to a point where we are consistently 50 to 70 people.

We try to have at least four leaders present for a Monday night run. We often have six-plus leaders. We’ll try to have someone in the front, someone in the front-middle, someone in the middle-back. And then, for our Monday night runs especially, we always have two party pacers. The party pacers will always travel at the pace of the last person.

One of the reasons we did two people was because we found that if you just have one person, then the person who is the last pace kind of feels like, ‘Oh, I’m making this leader stay behind.’ But when you have two, then you’re a group of people who are running together at that pace.

What initially sparked an interest in helping other runners train for races?

Sharon Tejada: In either 2022 or 2023, when I was training for the Philly Marathon, I did all of my runs exclusively in groups. That meant, even when I peaked at 50-55 miles a week, I was doing all of those in run clubs, because Philly has so many run clubs that fit people of different paces.

Through that, I met a lot of people. And by that time, I had run at least five marathons, so I kind of knew what I was doing, and was just learning so much, so rapidly. Also around 2022 is when I started working at the running store. So that’s when I was also learning a lot more about shoes and fuel and hydration and all of that.

I think it is an illusion that people say, ‘Oh, running is so accessible because you just need a pair of shoes.’ Okay, but where do you live in the city? And also, can you afford the pair of shoes? If you’re running for more than an hour, are you fueling? What if you don’t have a water bottle?

I’m someone who, when I’m in the community, I want to give back to what a community gives to me …. Because I was becoming so involved and was always present at these events, I just kind of naturally settled into this space of freely sharing my experience and freely sharing information that I was learning.

I’m one of the mentors for the 9:00-10:00 pace group [for Team Philly Race Training] …. That role is obviously pacing people through our long runs, but also helping to answer questions: You’re doing a double-digit run for the first time this weekend. What does that mean? What should you wear? Should you bring water? Should you bring electrolytes?

That wasn’t formal coaching, but that’s where I started falling into that coaching-style of relationship with people in running.

How did you learn about the opportunity to become a run coach through the Game Changers program?

Sharon Tejada: In the spring of 2024, I went to an event where I got the chance to talk to Vanessa Peralta Mitchell for the first time. She’s the founder of PWRHER’D and Game Changers. She told me about Game Changers, and everything she said just resonated with me so strongly.

[She said] women, and especially women of color, when they come into communities, they always take on this role of community building and community engagement. A lot of times, in order to help fuel representation and help other people who look like us — other women of color, other people that we connect to — and help to pull them into a space that we view as inaccessible, we tend to share that information freely and become a staple of the community and…usually not get compensated for that expertise.

She had started the Game Changers program, which helps women of color get their run coach certification. It’s a year-long program where the first bit is you get your certification, then you get to meet with a business strategist, and then you have six months of mentorship with an experienced coach so that they can help you either grow or start to build your coaching business.

She was like, ‘The application’s out. Why don’t you just apply?’

I was like, let’s just see what happens. At the very least, I can sort of formalize some of the thoughts that I have around training for races or getting into running and give people a little bit more structured information and less anecdotal information, which is what I was really giving.

So, I applied. I got in. Last October, I got the certification.

I really spent several months working with the people in Game Changers to think through, ‘Why am I a coach now? What’s the purpose? What am I bringing that others aren’t bringing?’ The big question to me was, ‘Who do I want to serve?’

What types of runners are you serving through your coaching business, Purple Runner Performance?

Sharon Tejada: I want to help folks who feel kind of stuck, like me, and who don’t feel represented in the running community. So, mainly folks of color, and women of color specifically. And then, especially queer folks are not well represented in the athletic space, and also often don’t feel safe in the athletic space for very obvious reasons now.

The people I’m more geared towards are beginner runners or people training for their first race, even if they’re used to running…with a focus on how to make a running plan fit more into your life, and less change your life to fit a running program.

What does your work look like? And what does your commute look like? How can we best place your speed work and your long run throughout the week to make sure that we’re setting you up for success without you having to sacrifice XYZ to be able to achieve this goal?

Follow Sharon at @purple.runner.performance on Instagram.

“I’m someone who, when I’m in the community, I want to give back to what a community gives to me …. Because I was becoming so involved and was always present at these events, I just kind of naturally settled into this space of freely sharing my experience and freely sharing information that I was learning.” - Sharon Tejada