Amy Lu's View

Yesterday I ran 2.23 miles in honor of Ahmaud Arbery, a young black man who was shot and killed on February 23 by two white men while he was out on a run. Arbery would have turned 26 on Friday so there is a “#IRunWithMaud” social media campaign to run 2.23 “Miles for Maud.”

I’m not sure I should post this–is it somehow disrespectful for me, a middle-aged white lady wrapped in privilege, to declare I’m appalled by the murder of a young black man? Is Facebook social activism so silly it’s offensive? Am I just jumping on a fad?

I think all these concerns are valid, but I also think there are more layers to this. I was struck and moved by seeing others post “#IRunWithMaud” on Facebook and it made me think more deeply about his death. So I decided to run 2.23 miles and post about it in honor of Ahmaud Arbery when I learned his high school football coach supported the campaign: https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/08/world/ahmaud-arbery-support-run-trnd/index.html.

I won’t claim that I spent all, or even most, of my run thinking about a young man I never met. But I did think about how lucky I am that I can run anywhere, and go almost anywhere, without anyone thinking I’m somehow a threat or don’t deserve to be there.

And I did think about how powerful it is that running gave me some commonality, no matter how small, to someone who’s life was very different than mine because of age, gender and race.

And I was (and still am) very, very thankful that I can get out and run. It’s a striking coincidence to me that the distance of this memorial run, 2.23 miles was almost exactly the distance I had been hoping to work up to after slowly returning to running. (Yes, to make this–I’m very excited to say I ran a tota of 11.23 miles last week! Saturday’s run of 2.23 was my longest. I hope to make it up to 3 miles by the end of this week).