WeRun313 Co-Founder Joe Robinson on How the Run Club Became a Catalyst for Group Fitness in Detroit

In 2016, Joe Robinson laced up his running shoes, went outside, and ran his first mile.

He couldn’t believe he could run that far without stopping.

From there, he worked up to a 3-mile run, a 5-mile run, then 10 miles.

“When I ran 10 miles for the first time,” Joe says, “I was just like, ‘Wow! Am I invincible?”

He was running alone in Detroit, motivated by the Nike Run Club app, which awarded him a badge for running 50 miles in a month. Another badge for running 100 miles in a month.

“Getting those little badges on the app just meant so much to me,” Joe shares.

A visit to the Detroit Free Press Marathon expo with a friend introduced him to the long-distance running community at large.

“I didn’t know that there was other people like me out there, as weird as that sounds,” Joe says. “I didn’t know there was a running community.”

Finding Fellow Runners in Detroit

Today, Joe runs upwards of 90 to 100 miles per week during training season. Last year alone, he had five key races, including the Sydney, Cape Town, and Greater St. Louis marathons. In previous years, he’s run New York, London, Chicago, and Berlin.

But he’s not running solo anymore.

In 2019, two of Joe’s friends, who also knew a Detroit runner named Lance Woods, suggested the two runners meet up.

“I’m from the East side of Detroit. He’s from the West side of Detroit,’ Joe shares. “I was organizing small groups of people. I was just dragging any and everybody out to the track. He was doing the same thing on his side of town.”

Shortly after meeting, they held their first group run together, and Joe and Lance shared with one another the mental health benefits they’ve gained from running.

“It’s crazy how parallel our story is,” Joe notes.

In May 2019, they co-founded and launched WeRun313 as a social run club in Detroit. While they purposely avoided positioning it as a mental health run club, they hoped others would experience similar mental health benefits.

WeRun313 has since grown to three weekly meetups — Two-Mile Tuesday, 5K/10K Thursday, and Saturday Long Run — with other events throughout the year. The club’s largest weekly event, Two-Mile Tuesday, often sees between 250 and 500 attendees.

“Detroit is the Blackest city in America, and we’re often ranked as the most unhealthy city in America,” Joe shares. “WeRun313 has kicked off a flurry of recreational fitness.”

The club’s presence in Detroit has sparked the start of other run clubs, bringing more opportunities for fitness and socialization to communities throughout the city.

Expanding Opportunities Through Partnerships and Programs

Currently structured as a business, WeRun313 is actively working on gaining nonprofit status. In addition to part-time work at a community food bank and raising two kids with his significant other, the run club has become a full-time venture for Joe. Much of that time goes into partnership development and community initiatives.

Over the years, companies including Gazelle Sports, ASICS, lululemon, Athletico, and Henry Ford Health have helped WeRun313 provide greater support to Detroit runners. Michigan-based running retail company Gazelle Sports, for example, works alongside WeRun313 to provide footwear and funding for an annual shoe giveaway and to help runners overcome financial barriers in the sport.

Gazelle Sports also gives WeRun313 space to sell its merchandise at an annual race expo, which is one of the club’s biggest revenue-generating and information-sharing opportunities of the year.

Another revenue source for the club is its paid monthly membership program, in which 2-3% of WeRun313 runners participate. Members get access to discounts, members-only events, and merchandise giveaways. Joe and Lance regularly receive race bibs for major marathons — Sydney, London, California International (CIM) — which they raffle off to paid members.

“With membership, we reinvest it back into the members,” Joe says. “We’re always hustling, trying to get benefits, trying to get cool things for our members.”

Bringing Community Stories to Paper

Surrounded by runners at different stages in their running journeys, Joe shares that new WeRun313 runners get opportunities to learn how to avoid injuries, train smarter, and celebrate milestones together — community benefits Joe missed out on when he was getting started with running.

“Every day, I see people who just ran their fastest, they ran their farthest,” he says. “And that changes every day, because they’re realizing their fitness, and they realize, ‘Wow, I ran 9 minutes.’ ‘Oh, today I ran 8:57.’ ‘Oh, today I ran 8:55.’”

Seeing runners’ stories unfold, Traci Cothran, a group runner from day one, approached Joe and Lance a few years ago to suggest publishing a book. With Traci’s connection to Wayne State University Press, the three began working on the idea.

“We solicited the run club,” Joe shares. “Anybody who has an amazing story about running.”

The book, which is set to launch this spring, features more than a dozen runners, including Joe and Lance. Stories shared are about finding love in the running community, losing weight, getting out of a mental rut, and more.

“It’s going to be an amazing read,” Joe says. “It’s going to show the real power of community and connectedness.”

Below, Joe shares more about his running journey, the mental health-based mission behind WeRun313, their annual shoe giveaway and scholarship initiatives, brand partnership advice for fellow run club leaders, and the impacts WeRun313 has had on the Detroit community.

How did you get into running?

Joe Robinson: As a kid, I was always foot racing on my street. So that’s my first remembrance. I’m talking like grade school, just always trying to line people up to see if I’m faster than them.

Fast forward to 2013. I was in the music business at this point. I managed artists in the music business for a little more than 10 years, from about 2010 all the way to 2019.

I was out in LA with an artist, and he had just got a mansion in Hollywood Hills. I had never been to LA at this point in my life, and he allowed me to stay there for a week or two, and it was just a culture shock. I mean, I was coming from Detroit. It was February here, so it’s gray sky, super cold, getting dark at 4 p.m., no vegetation, you know what I mean? To land in LA and see the complete opposite was just mind-blowing for me …. Just seeing the sun shining and it’s hot in February.

I was like, ‘Man, I want to do something. Why don’t I just go down to Venice Beach and just go for a run?’ …. Ever since middle school up until 2013, that was the first time I ever said, ‘I should just go for a run.’ But it was the environment that inspired me to go out and do so.

I had a pair of Nike Roshe Runs …. I took an $80 taxi from the Hollywood Hills to Santa Monica. I got down there, and I just took off doing sprints.

I [almost] passed out under a tree, and my heart was racing. I literally thought I was about to die because I was breathing so hard. And I was like, ‘I’m never doing this again!’

I came back home, in 2015, to the city of Detroit. ‘Let me try this running thing again.’ I went downtown, and just tried to go from stop sign to stop sign …. Then, in 2016 is when I tried to run one mile straight, and I did that. My mind was blown!

Since 2016, I’ve been locked in.

What motivated you to start a social run club?

Joe Robinson: In 2016, the reason I started locking in on running is because I felt like I was on my high horse because I ran 5 miles, and then I felt invincible when I ran 10 miles …. I got a massive self-esteem boost from what I now recognize as serotonin. I started to feel better about myself, and I didn’t realize I had low self-esteem until I got high self-esteem.

The birth of WeRun313 was, honestly, anchored in mental health.

[Lance and I] agreed that it was helping us in those areas in our life, so we wanted to share that with our community. Because one thing the Black community needs is therapy. When I say ‘therapy,’ I mean like therapy in terms of overall help with conquering mental illness. I don’t necessarily mean a sit-down conversation where you do a tell-all, although that can be therapeutic. But we need therapeutic practices that are holistic.

Our slogan is: WeRun313 is a social run club that connects like-minded individuals through running to build a healthier, happier community. We never said, ‘Hey, this is the mental health run club,’ because, honestly, that would probably scare people off. Or people might say, ‘Well, that’s stupid,’ or ‘I’m not going to that.’

You don't know you need the help until you get the help…so we kind of disguised it.

Has WeRun313’s mission evolved or expanded over the years?

Joe Robinson: The mission definitely remains the same…that’s never changed. What we do under that statement has constantly evolved.

We do the annual community shoe giveaways. We realize that Downtown Detroit is becoming a wealth-focused crown jewel of the state of Michigan. We were doing our shoe giveaway downtown, but the disparities don’t exist downtown because people down there earn more.

We’ve decided to come farther in the inner city of Detroit and do our shoe giveaways where the disparities do exist, where there isn’t running stores, where there isn’t run education, where people aren’t being told to go out and just go for a run around the block or run up and down the street, go for a jog for a few miles.

Every year at our gala, we give away money in our Pay It Forward grant to minority-owned businesses. We do three every year for the last four years. We also did a scholarship fund [for] people who might have limited access to running shoes, or people who want to get into running but they don’t know how, or people that want to get into running and they know how but they don’t have the access and funds to pay for race registration.

I believe it was five people [who received scholarships]. We got them running shoes, race registrations. All they had to do was show up to Two-Mile Tuesday every Tuesday for six weeks. We just lowered the barrier of entry.

We’re always evolving in what that work looks like, and as long as we continue to lower the barrier of entry, the mission statement stays the same.

What is your advice for other run clubs on partnering with brands?

Joe Robinson: Stay true to your mission statement. And in the words of the great E-40, ‘Stay loyal to your soil.’ That means, basically, if you’re a Detroiter and a brand outside of Detroit, which most of them are, wants you to do something that’s kind of counterproductive to your community — not in a negative way, but something that may take you out of Detroit — stay loyal to your soil. You have to stick to your roots.

Now, if you’re not trying to establish yourself in your city, and you want to do other things, then that’s on you. But most of the run club leaders that I know, they want to build and establish in their city. I would say, stay true to your turf and don’t do things just because they have a shiny logo attached to it, because it could be meaningless.

The biggest shoe companies in the world could come and say, ‘Hey, we’re going to come to you, and we want you to do a shoe demo way out here, where you run around this lake.’ You convince all your people to go out there and try on shoes. But what did you gain from that? They gained a lot. They gained insight from your group. They gained feedback from your group. They might have…a few orders out of it. But what did you gain? An empty tank of gas.

Stay true to your mission statement. Stay loyal to where you’re trying to plant your seeds.

What impact has WeRun313 had in the Detroit community?

Joe Robinson: When me and Lance started the run club, our main goal was we wanted to see more people of color getting out, getting healthy, taking themselves serious.

We always had this massive bike club in Detroit, prior to WeRun313, called Slow Roll. They already existed …. When WeRun313 blew up, we started seeing more rollerblading clubs, more bike clubs, more walking clubs, more run clubs.

I think WeRun313 was the catalyst for young millennials in the city. When they saw us, maybe they said, ‘Oh, wow, wait, this is actually kind of a cool thing.’

The response has been nothing short of incredible. We’ve gotten Spirit of Detroit awards, which is a high honor in the city. You get that award when you’re recognized by the mayor or the Detroit City Council for doing something great. We’ve got State of Michigan recognition. The local government has recognized our efforts and recognized what we do, and they endorsed us and supported us.

WeRun313 is still the big fish, but there are people in our backyard that are developing and growing and building their run clubs. They’re using our model, and I’m not necessarily mad at it …. If you’re getting people outside, if you’re getting people running, so be it. You know? That’s the beauty of it.

Follow @WeRun313 on Instagram.

“Our slogan is: WeRun313 is a social run club that connects like-minded individuals through running to build a healthier, happier community.” – Joe Robinson