National Black Marathoners Association

We ARE Distance Runners - Untold Stories (2024)

Winner of nineteen film festival awards in the US, Canada, Sweden, and India for Best Documentary, Best Director, Best Sports Film, Most Inspirational, Best Human Interest, Best Biographical, and other categories.

Whether you’re training for your first 5K walk or recovering from your 100th marathon, these interviews with hall of fame runners Dick Gregory, Ron Gregory, Tony Reed, Lisa Davis, Al Jackson, and Lisa Felder will motivate and inspire you to achieve your goals!!!

Imagine

- Being so sickly as a child, your doctors predicted you may not live past twenty years old. You defied the odds and ran a 5K in 16:29 and half marathon in 1:15:29 at 50 years old.

- Being a 238-pound divorced mother. Your son’s soccer coach encourages you to walk around the playing field to keep warm while they practice. You walked out of your comfort zone that day, finished over 450 marathons and ultras, and even recovered from cancer.

- Not having hot water at home. Thus, you ran high school cross-country and track so you could take hot showers after practice. Later, you’re joined by Muhammad Ali as you run 3,500 miles from LA to NYC.

- Being so fast in high school that your coach stopped training you to win races. Instead, he trained you to set national high school one- and two-mile records.

- Not being fast enough to win a high school race. Thirty years later, you set a world marathon record for women.

- Being told that you didn’t look like a distance runner at your first marathon. Eighteen months later, you win first place in a marathon’s under thirty age group. Twenty-five years later, you make world marathon history.

Watch "We ARE Distance Runners: Untold Stories of African American Athletes" to see how these individuals beat childhood poverty, medical diagnoses, and naysayers to become national and world record holders, history makers, and accomplished distance runners from the mile to the marathon. Historical information about Ted Corbitt is also included.