Alison Mariella Desir “accidentally” became a runner in 2012 and is now on a journey of activism through movement.

Desir, who is in Bermuda to participate in the Chubb Bermuda Triangle Challenge this weekend, came to prominence after founding the Harlem Run Club, which has hundreds of members and aims to honour stories of marginalised communities, many of whom have often been denied access to long-distance running.

But roll back more than a decade and Desir was struggling with her mental health when she came across a social-media post about a Black man training for a marathon and she followed along as he chronicled his journey online.

“I knew that Black people ran marathons but I only thought of East Africans, you know, the professional athletes,” Desir said.

“I didn’t know that regular recreational Black people ran marathons and he was sharing how it was changing his life. I was looking for something to change my life, so the very next year I signed up for the same marathon.

“It was through a programme where you receive training and raise money for the Leukaemia Lymphoma Society and I wound up raising $5,000. It made me feel better about myself and the connection between movement and mental health was immediately clear for me.

“It also aligned the idea of movement and being part of something greater than yourself, so I decided that I wanted to start my own group to share that experience with other people and that was really the beginning of me using running for community building and community organising.”

The Harlem Running Club, which she founded in New York in 2013, fuses running with social activism. It now has hundreds of members with its latest fundraising campaign geared towards a project helping immigrants in the city.

“For the first six to nine months, nobody was showing up,” Desir said. “I was showing up every week by myself and crying to my mom that nobody was coming. It took a while but within a year there were over 100 people showing up.

“It was about equity, creating space for people who historically may not have seen themselves as runners and making sure that we not just ran together but that we also invested in not just our local community but the larger community.

“Right now we are fundraising for an organisation that works with immigrants in New York City. I think everything is political, but running is certainly political. We’re moving our body through space and making sure we are not just running for self but running for community and others.”

Harlem is the centre of Desir’s universe. It’s where her parents met and where she was born. She attended Columbia University there and it is also one of the centres of Black culture.

“There’s another running boom taking place right now but still disproportionately it’s white people who are running,” she said.

“I wanted to create a space built for people like me. Everybody is welcome and invited but it would be rooted in our culture and recognising Harlem, not just as a place that we run, but almost as if Harlem is a member itself of the group.

“How are we going to be good stewards of Harlem? How are we going to recognise Harlem history? How are we going to be in community with other community members?”

Desir eventually combined her growing love of running with her passion for history to write her own book Running While Black. As a new mother to a baby boy, her writing was inspired by the 2020 murder of Ahmaud Arbery, who was jogging through a neighbourhood in Georgia when he was fatally shot by three white men who had incorrectly assumed he was a burglar.

“This country [the US] historically, and honestly now more than ever, restricts how Black and Brown people move through space,” she said. “So if you’re thinking about distance running, you need to be outside for a long time. You want to be running in areas where you feel safe.

“Safety, of course, is an illusion as you may have safety in terms of infrastructure if you're lucky, but do you have physical safety and psychological safety? The threat of being stopped and not making it home is very real.

“The impetus for Running While Black came from the murder of Ahmaud Arbery, and not just his murder because he certainly is not the first young Black man to be murdered in daylight.

“I had my son in July 2019 and this happened in February 2020, so it was the first time that I experienced that happening while having a son who could one day be murdered in broad daylight.

“My son’s name is Kori, which is Haitian Creole and means to run. Running has meant so much to me, yet running is not the same for Black people in this country because of all of the things that one needs to run such as safety, freedom of movement, access and money.

“You can’t understand anything in most countries without talking about race because every country was rooted in a racial caste system. Race is part of what choices people make in terms of sport, what choices they make in terms of how they show up and what choices they make of where they can go.

“I wanted to accomplish several things in my book. I wanted to tell my personal story of this complex relationship with running outdoors but I also wanted to tell the unknown history of Black people in the outdoors and long-distance running.

“The book came out in 2022 and I’m still just so delighted that people continue to be positively impacted by it. Writing a book is so vulnerable and I sometimes forget that so much of my life is out there.”

Desir hosts her own television series on PBS in the United States called Out and Back, where she explores the wilderness in the Pacific Northwest of the United States, engages in outdoor activities and highlights people of colour’s connection to nature.

However, she will be trading the mountains for beaches when she runs in Bermuda this week. Although excited to do the Half Challenge and grateful to the event organisers for inviting her to participate, she is most excited to learn about Bermuda’s history and culture.

“It’s really powerful as somebody who is interested in history to be in a country that’s rooted in Blackness and Black people being in all segments of society,” Desir said.

“My parents are immigrants and I’m Caribbean American so Bermuda is not my culture but a familiar culture. I want that sense of home and joy and sunshine.

“I’m excited to be running but I’m more excited to soak in being in another place. The United States feels really scary right now, so going somewhere that will feel joyful is a huge part of it.”