Meet our March Reckless Runner of the Month, Greg Woodburn. Greg is the Distance Team Captain for University of Southern California Trojan Track Team. He is not only an accomplished runner, but he is also a great humanitarian dedicated to sharing his love of the sport with people all over the world. Through his Give Running Foundation (www.giverunning.org), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that he started, Greg has donated over 12,000 pairs of running shoes to needy people around the world. Prepare to be inspired with Greg’s story and find out how you can donate to his foundation.
RR: Tell us about yourself and how you got started running.
GW: I am a senior Trustee Scholar at the University of Southern California graduating in May with High Honors in History and a double-minor in Entrepreneurship and Painting. I am this year’s Distance Team Captain on the USC Track & Field team as well as President of the Men of Troy cross country club, and represent Men’s Track as Co-President of the Trojan Athletic Senate.
I played soccer for three years in elementary school when it was more like “swarm-ball” – there were no positions except for goalie and running after the ball. My parents noticed that I ran faster than most of the kids and didn’t get as tired, and so decided to sign me up for the Ventura (California) Tigres (it is “Tigres” and not “Tigers” on purpose) youth track club when I was eight years old.
From there, I fell in love with the purity of the sport: it’s just you and the clock, you and your innermost self. As I began to run youth cross-country – even competing on several youth national championship teams from Southern California – I was also drawn to the blend of team and individual pursuits in running. Pushing teammates and scoring points for the team, and also focusing on giving total effort and setting personal bests.
RR: You don’t just run, but you are also an artist and a 2012 Rhodes Scholar finalist. How do you balance all of these activities and how do they complement one another?
GW: My great-grandfather Ansel wrote a poem, the first line of which reads:“The worker dies, but the work lives on.” Living in the present moment, it is important to focus on the work rather than the title –on what we do rather than who we are– because ultimately who we are results from what we do and why we do it. And, if we do what we love, our work will live on.
I run because I love to run; I paint because I love to paint; I started a non-profit organization because I love to pay forward my blessings by helping others. I feel most myself when I am doing what I love, and three of the character traits I hold most dear are authenticity, empathy, and integrity. I use three simple yet wise quotes by my hero, the late humanitarian and coach John Wooden, to define these guiding ideals. Authenticity: “Be true to yourself.” Empathy:“Help others.” Integrity: “Make each day your masterpiece.”
Painting, like running and life, is a process – it is the joy of the work that matters rather than any final piece or title. We never know how many brushstrokes, how many strides, how many heartbeats remain to manifest themselves. But we do know that making this brushstroke, this stride, this heartbeat the very best of which we are capable is what counts; and then we do this again and again and again.
When other people look at my paintings, they do not see what I see. They see the play of light and shadow, forms and hues and textures on canvas. When I look at my paintings, I see the physical work in front of me but also remember – relive – the process of creating it: the hours spent in solitude late at night in the studio, just me and the thrill of losing track of time caught up in the work. I smile at the hidden struggles no one else will see – the hard work required for the piece to appear effortless. Other people see an eye on the canvas surface, for instance, while as I look I remember how challenging it was to get the form and lighting of the iris just right.
Similarly, in a track meet, spectators watch each race once the gun goes off. In truth, however, we runners all know the race has largely been decided long before then: in the months of training leading up to toeing the line, in the early morning decisions to exchange sleep for sweat, in giving it all once more during some now forgotten seventh interval. Both a race and a painting are the culmination of long effort largely hidden from view. Both are the joy of the process, with the race results and completed artwork serving as but the final manifestations of the strides and brushstrokes.
RR: You have had several injuries throughout your running career. Many people would have thrown in the towel. What was your motivation to keep going?
GW: As I mentioned, I have been a competitive distance runner since elementary school. As a high school freshman, however, I suffered a hip stress fracture and was sidelined for most of the season. Then, during my sophomore year, I grew about seven inches in six months and had knee issues and tendonitis that kept my running on-and-off the entire year. Devastated by my injuries then, today I consider them true blessings. They made me realize how deeply I love running and all it has given me: improved health, confidence, camaraderie.
My parents, and especially my older sister Dallas – herself a track and cross-country runner in High School who is now an accomplished author – have always taught me that the best, most effective way to overcome personal adversity is to help others. For helping others with their problems brings us joy and places our own problems in proper perspective. In this light, while I was injured and unable to run, I started thinking about underprivileged kids who couldn’t enjoy running and its rewarding lessons – not because of injury, but because they could not afford running shoes.
Indeed, my family’s lesson has proven true in my experience: helping others overcome their problems has brought me joy and perspective. Joy in hearing from orphanages in Africa that the lives of many kids have been turned from violence and drugs towards school and family simply by reminding them, through a pair of shoes, that they are loved. Perspective in smiling when I look back on my injuries, and having the strength to overcome a series of injuries during my college career at USC including achilles tendonitis and a femural neck stress reaction. I guess you could say I am trying to be a true Reckless Runner like Fam!
It’s not a choice whether or not to bounce back at this point: it just is. I think resilience may be the greatest form of courage. And I am excited to be healthy for my senior track season at USC.
RR: You started Give Running (www.giverunning.org), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. How did you get the idea for it, and tell us your achievements thus far.
GW: My journey in social entrepreneurship began not with a business plan, but rather when nothing went according to plan. Specifically, the life lessons I learned from my injuries inspired me to turn adversity into opportunity by creating Give Running (www.giverunning.org), a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that uses running to instill in disadvantaged youth the character traits that serve as a foundation for success in the classroom, community, and life. Since 2006, Give Running has collected, cleaned, and donated more than 12,000 pairs of running and athletic shoes to youth in developing countries – such as Haiti and Belize in Latin America, and Liberia, Uganda, and Sudan in Africa – as well as local inner-city communities, including those neighboring the University of Southern California. Give Running currently has chapters ranging from USC to the College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts, and has engaged many other communities through shoe drives and events from China to Spain. My involvement with Give Running has been detailed in O. the Oprah Magazine, People Magazine, and Reader’s Digest, as well as on CNN’s Headline News Network and Ghanaian national television.
To further promote a love for running and the powerful benefits it fosters, Give Running has begun expanding to hold youth running camps that include leadership development and community service components emphasizing the broader application of lessons learned through sports. Thus, in addition to teaching kids about running drills, proper technique, well-balanced training, nutrition, sports psychology, and injury prevention, we also work on teamwork, leadership, goal-setting, and achieving personal success.
This past winter break, I personally planned, organized, and led Give Running’s team on a ten-day trip to Ghana in West Africa, where we partnered with the two local NGOs iStandAbove and Witness Hope to hold Give Running’s first international Pyramid Running Camp, soccer tournament, and basketball clinic. In total, we worked with more than 300 youth, using sports to engage them in learning how goal-setting, teamwork, leadership, and achieving personal success apply not only to sports, but to all aspects of life.
With Coach John Wooden being one of my most esteemed role models whom I once had the privilege to spend an afternoon visiting in his home, my favorite exercise challenged teams of campers to find and then assemble different character trait blocks to physically build CoachWooden’s Pyramid of Success. Indeed, the name “Pyramid Running Camp” underscores the fact that Coach Wooden’s teachings are at the heart of our philosophy.
Give Running also worked with iStandAbove and Witness Hope to jointly hold a Coaching Clinic with more than twenty-five of Ghana’s elite coaches– including the Vice President of the Ghana National FootballAssociation – covering both the physical and mental aspects of sports. Other highlights from the humanitarian trip included donating Give Running shoes; distributing food to hundreds of disadvantaged children in one of the most impoverished neighborhoods in Accra, Ghana’s capitalcity; and being interviewed live on Ghanaian national televisionabout Give Running.
My trip to Ghana would have been a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity except that my heart was similarly touched two years earlier. In D ecember 2009, I traveled to Mali in West Africa as part of the USC Africa Health Initiative and spent three weeks in the small village of Sikoro (population 450) building an irrigated community garden. I also brought 113 pairs of Give Running shoes – as many as I could fit in five duffel bags. The day before departing, I went on a six-mile run circling through the village. After running the first few laps of my quarter-mile loop in solitude, I was soon joined by more than twenty smiling kids. My running partners were wearing the shoes they had recently received; for many, it was their first-ever footwear. During this most memorable run of my life, one young man stood out because he was unable to race on the trail’s rocky sections. Lameen Sacko, I learned, had not received a pair of gift shoes. The next morning –my last in the village – I met Lameen at his mud hut and asked him to try on my personal running shoes, which were the only shoes I brought for my own use in Mali. The size-11.5 SuperNovas fit Lameen perfectly.
Personally distributing shoes in Sikoro and working with youth in Accra were humbling experiences, and confirmed to me the importance of paying forward the blessings in my life. My impassioned work with Give Running and as a USC student-athlete teach me about the potential for sports in community-building and fostering opportunities for youth. A single run ends; shoes wear out; but the lessons of running – and relationships forged between runners –last forever. (Indeed, when the new USC Africa Health Initiative cohort returned to Sikoro this past summer, I sent along another pair of my personal running shoes for my friend Lameen.)
RR: What are the future goals for the Give Running Foundation??
GW: Beginning this summer, I will hold more Pyramid Running Camps on a continual basis in Southern California and hopefully at the locations of our other chapters as we continue to build and refine our curriculum. Too, I plan to expand our camps to culminate in fun 5K road races open to campers’ families and the public, serving as a celebration and conversation about fitness and character.
Feedback in Ghana raised my awareness to the possibility and need for holding more Coaching Clinics, which enables Give Running to impact the coaches we work with along with their current and future student-athletes by extension. In line with broadening the reach of our lessons and values, another opportunity for Give Running is to produce a DVD and online series of Pyramid Running Camp curriculum, lectures, and drills to distribute to interested schools and sports programs globally, as well as to conduct Give Running seminars via Skype.
I will also actively expand Give Running’s network of chapters. I have developed a guide for starting new chapters based on our experiences and best practices; new chapters currently getting off the ground include Give Running Australia as well as a presence in Portland, Oregon. The challenge moving forward is improving Give Running’s marketing and recruitment to build the teams of committed people we need at each Give Running chapter, and then working on building their success as leaders.
My vision for Give Running further includes youth running clubs based around our various chapters, creating the additional opportunity for volunteers to pay forward their passions by coaching the next generation and helping youth thrill in the joys of running forward. As a type of year-round Pyramid Running Camp, the daily team practices will serve as after-school programming that is not only about improving fitness and running fast, but developing the positive attitude and skills that serve as a foundation for success well beyond the lanes of the track. I am launching the first youth running club in inner-city Los Angeles because I already have a strong relationship with the University of Southern California, the USC Athletic Department, as well as the South Los Angeles Jaguars, a youth track team created by two Los Angeles police officers to provide a positive alternative for the youth they at times previously found sprinting and jumping to evade them on the tough inner-city streets.
One of my most ambitious pursuits, as stated in Give Running’s 2020 Vision of goals to achieve by the year 2020(www.giverunning.org/2020.aspx), is to build an all-weather surface track in a community that currently does not have access to such a facility – specifically with an environmentally sustainable approach that uses the rubber from recycled shoes that are in too poor of condition to donate as Give Running shoes for kids to wear.
I am particularly excited about this opportunity to leverage greater impact from Give Running’s current resources without compromising –but rather strengthening – our standards. This way, all the shoes Give Running receives will be used to promote a love for running, whether as the shoes on a new runner’s feet or the track surface underfoot. This endeavor will also provide an opportunity for area youth to become involved with aspects of the site’s labor and maintenance – a fulfilling way to increase self-esteem and provide a tangible sense of community ownership of the track. This investment will additionally fulfill the need for a safe place for youth to spend time after school and families to go on weekends. Moreover, as cross-pollination with our other programs, this new track and the support of the community there in will benefit launching another Give Running youth club track team.
RR: Tell our readers how they can donate to your Give Running Foundation.
GW: Give Running, Inc. is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt non-profit organization, and you can donate to us financially by mailing a check to our headquarters at 400 Roosevelt Court, Ventura, CA 93003; or by using the Donate Now button on our website: www.giverunning.org
You can also of course donate shoes to one of our chapters; please see our Chapters page (http://giverunning.org/chapters.aspx) to see if we have any chapters or shoe collection drives taking place near you, or you can mail shoes to Give Running, 400 Roosevelt Court, Ventura, CA 93003. I cannot over emphasize that we only give running shoes in excellent condition; indeed, we have received enthusiastic feedback from many orphanages about the top quality of our donations, and it is very important to us to continue giving our recipients high quality shoes. There is no definitive measure of whether or not a pair of shoes is in good enough condition to donate, but common sense and personal judgment are usually right. The most important thing to remember is that these shoes are going to other people. Ask yourself, for instance, if your friend or child would wear these shoes on a hike or rainy day – in other words, when they care about the function rather than fashion of the shoes.
RR: Any words of encouragement to runners just starting out in this sport or to any runners looking to start their own charities.
GW: A quote from renowned American poet and writer Maya Angelou hangs above my desk: “When you learn, teach; when you get, give.” I think the best way to make a difference in the world is through paying forward our blessings by teaching when we learn and giving when we receive. Whether training for your first race or looking to create a charity, my advice is to focus on the process because the journey truly is greater than the destination. Start small, know why you want to embark on this journey, and make sure to have fun doing it. I would also add that as a Reckless Runner racing against the clock and running forward toward my dreams, two lessons have profoundly shaped who I am.
Patience is a bitter seed but bears sweet fruit.
If life always went according to plan, it wouldn’t turn out for the best.
In closing, I would like to share another story. There are two brothers in Southern California who had a single pair of shoes between the two of them that were too small for the older brother and too big for the younger brother. The shoes were falling apart to the point that duct tape held them together. The brothers alternated days wearing the worn-through shoes so they could attend school. Thanks to Give Running, each brother now has his own pair of well-fitting shoes so they can both attend school every day with confidence, take a step forward – and never stop running.
