The local running club focuses on training, inspiring 38 members to take on the LA Marathon this past Sunday.
Every Monday at 6:30 p.m., a group of nearly 100 people pull into the Home Depot parking lot in Signal Hill.
They’re not there to buy two-by-fours.
Rather, they’re members of the Long Beach Running Club—one of the largest running groups in Long Beach—there to take in five miles of Signal Hill’s scenic trails on sneakered foot.
The group was founded by Gus Esparza, a longtime runner who formed the group after an unhappy accident.
In 2013, Esparza was hit by a truck while riding his motorcycle in Ortega Canyon. The crash shattered the windshield of the car and sent Esparza off a cliff. He broke his left leg and received 42 stitches across his abdomen.
He couldn’t walk for nine months. He gained 25 pounds.
When he got back on his feet again, he hit the ground running—literally.
“I would park at The Home Depot, where we meet now, on Cherry and Willow and just run up the trails by myself,” Esparza said. “Little by little, I started meeting people, just running at the same time.”
Those passing interactions turned into fledgling friendships, and Esparza and a few runners began to meet at 7 a.m. Sunday to run together.
“For the first two years, there was only like four or five of us,” he said.
It was another running club founder who pushed Esparza to formalize the running club.
“He told me, ‘You have a good thing here. Nobody runs hills in Long Beach,’ because all we have is the beach and flat land,” he said.
In 2016, Esparza signed up for his first and only Instagram account: @long_beach_running_club.
“And here we are almost eight years later, with more than 100 runners,” Esparza said, emphasizing that the club is completely free.
The running club was casual at first, he said—five miles every Monday through different brushy trails of Signal Hill.
Then, Esparza recalled, four years into running, a friend had an idea: “What if we ran a marathon?”
“We had no idea what we were getting ourselves into,” he said.
Club goes from casual running to marathon training: ‘That’s how we differ from everyone else’
They followed a 20-week training program that Esparza “just copy and pasted from online.” He added an extra run—10 miles on Sundays at 7 a.m.—to increase the group’s endurance.
“To our surprise, that was our biggest turnout,” he said. Every Sunday, 80 to 90 people would show up for their 10-mile beach run starting at the Veterans Memorial Pier in Belmont Shore.
That year, 12 members of the club crossed the finish line of the LA Marathon, including Esparza.
“It was horrible,” he said, noting that he had no intention of running the marathon at first.
But he was training with the group, which ran 22 miles twice in preparation. He thought, “might as well.”
He walked ten times, he lamented. But he finished.
“It was tough,” he said. “But everybody says, ‘Once you do one, you can’t stop.’ And that was the case for me. Then I kept going, then I wanted to beat my own time. And that’s exactly what happens to all of us. We want to get better.”
From there, training became the main focus of the running club. Members ran the LA Marathon twice, the San Francisco Marathon, the Long Beach Marathon, with 5Ks and 10Ks in between. Some current members are training for the California International Marathon in Sacramento.
“We have over 12 running clubs in Long Beach and they’re all different,” Esparza said. “Some start at bars, some end at bars. […] We’re not elite marathoners, far from that. But we actually have goals. That’s how we differ from everyone else.”
The runners in the club come from far and wide. Some drive in from neighboring Lakewood and San Pedro, others make the trek from East Los Angeles, Anaheim and Santa Ana to train for different events.
On Monday, March 21 at 6:30 p.m., 80 runners gathered in the Home Depot parking lot. A quarter wore medals across their chests.
A day prior, 38 club members ran the LA Marathon. For more than half, it was their first marathon.
“It was always something I wanted to check off my bucket list, but I didn’t really have the confidence to do it,” said William Yuen, who completed the marathon on Sunday. “So I started to run more often with a regular group of experienced runners, and it gave me the initiative.”
Tara Baca arrived at the parking lot a bit after 6 p.m., chatting with other medal-wearing runners who jokingly groaned about their sore legs.
“It’s a big goal to chase, and it’s my first running event ever. Never done a 5K, no 10K, so why not go for the big one?” said Baca, who joined the group after she was furloughed from work during the pandemic.
She said the marathon was a “beautiful experience” and that she “didn’t even feel the first 15 miles.” The rest, she said, were “pretty brutal.”
Stephanie Pirir stood in a group with Baca and Yeun, who all came to Signal Hill, not to run, but to celebrate “Medal Monday,” a tradition where the marathon runners take a group photo at Hilltop Park after their successful run.
“I couldn’t run past three miles and I just did my first marathon,” said Pirir, who started running with the group in 2021. “[Esparza’s] character is amazing. Pushing us through, like ‘You got this! You’re going to get through this!’”
She didn’t immediately discount the idea of running another: “Ask me in three days, because I’m in pain right now.”
Kelly Bradford, an aspiring marathon runner, didn’t participate in the LA Marathon on Sunday, but she was there at mile 15, cheering on members of the group and manning the aid station.
“It’s just a really welcoming environment. I don’t go to church, so it was really great to form a sense of community,” Bradford said. “I’m autistic and I have a hard time making friends, so it was really nice to come to an environment where I’m immediately accepted.”
She joined the group at the behest of her dietician, who knew she was running alone and thought running with a group might benefit her. She came to a Monday night run last September and has been coming ever since.
“It doesn’t really matter how fast you run, or how many miles per week,” the Lakewood resident said. “If you’ve got your shoes on and you run, you’re welcome.”
Esparza stressed that the running club is welcome to anyone who wants to join, no matter their speed.
“A guy showed up last Monday and he was like, ‘How do I join the club?’” Esparza recalled. “I said, ‘You just did,’ and he started laughing. ‘You did, just by showing up.’ There’s no registration, nothing. You just come run with us.”
And free end-of-run hydration isn’t the only charitable offering the group provides.
Esparza holds an annual 10K charity run for the club’s anniversary, donating the profits to organizations like the Long Beach Rescue Mission—which has a running club—and Casa Youth Shelter in Los Alamitos.
Last year they attracted 200 runners and raised $3,000. The event has been sponsored by Under Armour, ASICS and Nike—who the group continues to partner with. In the past few years, they’ve also taken on runners from Students Run Los Angeles, which introduces running to kids from underserved neighborhoods in Los Angeles.
“[That’s one of my favorite memories], turning the running club into more than just a running club, into making a difference not just in our everyday lives, but helping charities,” Esparza said, noting that meeting his longtime girlfriend Sandy Nevarez through the club was his first favorite memory. “I’m the face of the Long Beach Running Club, she’s the brains.”
And though Esparza doesn’t run with the group every week, he’s always there at the end, handing out water or Gatorades to members huffing their way back to the parking lot.
“I think LBRC is a great way to start running,” Pirir said. “The encouragement, the love that they provide. You think they’re not going to be waiting for you after five miles, but they’re waiting for you. Especially after these hills, these hills are killer […] But the view is amazing.”
The Long Beach Running Club meets every Monday at 6:30 p.m. at The Home Depot parking lot (2450 Cherry Ave, Signal Hill) for a 5-mile run and Mondays at 7 a.m. at Belmont Brewing Company (25 39th Pl, Long Beach) for runs from 4 to 12 miles. More information on run schedules and events can be found on Instagram at @long_beach_running_club.
Correction, March 28: A previous version of this story implied that Long Beach Running Club member Kelly Bradford was not an aspiring marathon runner. She is an aspiring marathon runner and has run dozens of half-marathons in preparation, Yuka Kobayashi told the Signal Tribune. We regret this error.
