How a pair of Black-run clubs are changing the GTA sports landscape

Every Mother’s Day, for years, Melanie Murzeau and her brother, Michael Greaves, laced up their running shoes, pinned on their numbers and ran the Sporting Life 10K. The race, which weaves through midtown Toronto and helps raise money for children with cancer and other serious illnesses, was their special tradition. But despite the personal significance of the run, something about it always felt off: here was Yonge Street, full of participants, and she didn’t see anyone that looked like her. 

“I saw a lot of men,” Murzeau says. “I did not see a lot of Black women.”

The experience wasn’t exclusive to that annual Mother’s Day race, either. At pretty much every event she entered, Murzeau felt separate from the crowd, even while right in the middle of a sea of people. So, for more than a decade, she mostly ran alone, using social media as an accountability partner. 

That might’ve been how the rest of Murzeau’s running life played out, if not for a tragedy that occurred 1,800 kilometres from Murzeau’s Scarborough, Ont., home and reverberated around the world.

Ahmaud Arbery was just 25 years old when he went out for a jog in Glynn County, Ga., on Feb 23, 2020. On that run, Arbery was chased down by three white men in vehicles and shot to death by one of the men, Travis McMichael. The murder sparked a massive public outcry. It also spawned the ‘Run With Maud’ movement, highlighting the mental benefits of jogging for members of the Black community, and featuring a virtual 5K in Arbery’s honour.

Murzeau watched the cell phone footage of the murder. “It was just so heart-wrenching just to see the solo runner, and then they're following him and then they're accosting him,” she says. “But he was just on his own, right?” 

Inspired by #RunWithMaud, she felt a pressing desire to act, to help create safe spaces for runners like Arbery, and like her. From that spark, Black Runners of the GTA was born. “The genesis was just focusing more on BIPOC runners,” she says. “And having a voice in the community”

Chris McGarrell can relate. After rediscovering his passion for cycling in 2020, he too felt he wasn’t seeing himself reflected in the sport he loves.

McGarrell grew up in Scarborough, where riding a bike was a significant part of his childhood — though as a primary form of transportation rather than a sport. Once he got to high school, he traded in his two wheels for public transit, getting around on the ever-so-reliable TTC.

It wasn’t until he was well into his 30s that he got back on a bike again, his love for cycling re-ignited when he and some friends travelled to Amsterdam.

“I remember how invigorating it felt when I went on that vacation with my boys,” McGarrell says. “We rented bikes and rode all around the city. How much of a vibe it was.”

When COVID hit, all of McGarrell’s usual physical activities were no longer an option. Cooped up at home, cycling rose to the top of his mind.

“I used to go play ball twice a week, I used to go to the gym, and all that was shut down. So that's where my brain started to question, ‘What other options are there?’” he says. “Then my boy and I landed on bikes, and the rest is history,”

This was the birth of ManDem CC, the cycling club McGarrell started in the spring of 2020. “It was very innocuous how it [started],” he says. He and some friends got together to ride, and the group grew organically, hosting 18 events over 16 consecutive weekends.      

Black Runners of the GTA and ManDem CC were formed with very different goals, and from different sparks. One is the manifestation of an urgent desire to create safe spaces in the wake of a tragedy, while the other is the result of a desire to connect with friends and get back on a bike in a way that felt true during a period of confinement and isolation.      

It’s no surprise, then, that there are differences in the ways the clubs operate and the members they attract. But what they share is far more powerful: an undeniable impact on the communities of their respective sports. In spaces where athletes of colour don’t always feel welcome, creating an environment where they do is priceless.

Murzeau has a background in diversity, equity and inclusion, and used principles she developed in her professional life to build the club. Key to its mission, vision and ethos is allowing runners to participate in whatever way feels comfortable to them.

“If you want to be a part of this beautiful community of runners, you can. And if you want to run on your own, you can.” Murzeau says. “We're there to support you.”

Black Runners’ signature annual event, the Scarborough 5K, reflects everything the organization stands for. First staged in 2022, it usually runs in the summer, though this year it will run at the end of May. Most of the proceeds go to charities supporting the local community, like Fast and Female and the Scarborough East chapter of the Boys and Girls Club. It offers a chance for residents to see themselves running through their streets and, more importantly, to feel at home.

“We make sure that there's Soca music playing. We make sure that there's patties and samosas being offered,” Murzeau says. “It's really, really inclusive in the way that the music, the food, the atmosphere is just a different vibe, and a different race, that brings Scarborough into the actual Toronto running scene.”

Throughout the country, running is growing in popularity among racialized groups. In 2023, 32 per cent of Black Canadians cited running as their favourite sport. At the professional level, the sprints dominate — the men’s and women’s 100-metre finals remain one of the marquee events of the Summer Olympics.

But there’s more to the sport than sprinting alone. Thinking back on her own running history, Murzeau knows well the way young Black athletes can be funnelled toward the shorter distances. A sprinter in elementary school, Murzeau realized when she hit high school that she wasn’t fast enough to continue to compete at the level she wanted. She still loved running, but when she felt she’d lost her short-burst speed, long and middle distances were not presented as an alternative.

“I really believe that a lot is based on coaches,” she says. “I’m just talking from my personal experience. I feel like coaches stereotype or put Black athletes only as sprinters.”

It’s an experience that could’ve soured her on the sport. But having fallen in love with distance running, Murzeau’s passion is both obvious and contagious.

“Everyone’s accountable. Everyone has a voice. Everyone can start and take to running, and the run community that’s already established will help you be a part of this run community,” she gushes. “I just think runners are the best!”

McGarrell has similar strong feelings about cycling, but acknowledges that it took him a while to discover them. One reason for the delay was something the ManDem CC founder still sees as an unspoken barrier to entry for young athletes of colour today: the stigma of participating in a sport that isn’t considered cool.

“They might have had a teacher or someone plant the seed,” he says. “But [they won’t follow through] because they’re so caught up on peer pressure and doing what the cool kids are doing and not wanting to be a nerd.”

McGarrell dealt with this firsthand as a high-school rugby player. The lower status of the sport among his classmates didn't stop him from excelling, but he was aware of the noise around him. 

“You're talking to a guy from Scarborough that was playing rugby,” he says, laughing. “I was wearing the short shorts in high school.” 

This was at a time when your shorts had to be baggy and reach below the knee. 

“I heard it all,” McGarrell continues. “And those men didn’t care that my team was the champions and that I was the captain.” 

The impact of these organizations can be hard to quantify. There is the sheer number of members, or the amount of money raised through fundraisers, sure. But those figures fail to properly capture all the intangibles, the human impact McGarrell has seen firsthand in the way his club inspires Black and brown people in the community — as he puts it: the “people that I've met over the years that have told me, ‘I bought a bike to roll with you guys’ or, like, ‘I saw you doing your thing and I had to get a bike.’”

Inspiration like that is an important measure of success, too, and these two clubs — both promoting healthy lifestyles in the Black community — have each changed the culture around sport in their areas.

McGarrell remembers a phone call with his uncle that put everything he’s accomplished with ManDem CC in perspective. His uncle called to give him his flowers and, while talking about their family and attitudes around fitness in the Black community, summarized the club's impact aptly: 

“There's a lot of Black people that see you, as a Black guy from Toronto or from Scarborough, leading a bike club. And you're out here every weekend, and you love the activity,” McGarrell’s uncle told him. “And that is inspiring other Black and brown people to want to also participate.”

From Black Runners of the GTA to ManDem CC, throughout Scarborough there is living proof that endurance sports have a place in Black communities. Through their work, Murzeau and McGarrell have built spaces where representation and passion collide, where the next generation can see themselves in sports that were once considered out of reach.