The Sequoia Cafe Run Club Makes Me Hate Running A Little Less

For the record, I hate running. 

Disregard the finisher medals from two marathons, five half-marathons, and a handful of 5ks and 10ks that hang from a nail above my desk. Those are souvenirs: tokens to remember the experience by, not trophies. Still, there’s something that compels me to throw on my running shoes a couple times per week and to sign up for races I know I won’t “win.”

I am not an anomaly in this ambivalence towards running. Far from it. If you were to ask other runners if they like running, many would express having a similar love/hate relationship with it. Ask them why they run, and you’ll get a hundred different reasons: To stay in shape, to mitigate anxiety or depression, to overcome addiction, to feel… something. Whatever the motivation, no runner has picked up the habit without being humbled by it, and yet many would be hard-pressed to call it quits for good.

Part of the appeal of running recreationally is that there’s no real competition. You don’t win by placing first in a race, but by reaching a block or two further than you did on your previous run, by shaving a couple seconds off your PR, or by feeling like you showed for yourself. That feeling of accomplishment is a high that keeps you coming back for more. Competing with yourself, however, often means running by yourself, and for most of my running career, (to use the loosest possible definition of the word career) I ran solo. Aside from the few times I peer-pressured a friend to join me for a run on the North Shore Esplanade or down Bay St to the Alice Austen House, I ran by myself. I would reach my distance goals on those runs, but I was lonely. 

In one of my undergrad English courses, I was assigned the book Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer. The book tells the story of Christopher McCandless, a young man from the suburbs of DC who traveled across the country and ventured into the Alaskan wilderness in the early 90s to lead an ascetic life away from what he saw as a morally-bankrupt and materialistic society. McCandless’ philosophy of self-reliance in nature might have been idealistic, but one has to respect his commitment to his values. In just a couple years of adventuring in the American southwest and eventually Alaska, McCandless experienced more on his own than most people do in a lifetime. But when illness threatened his life and he was face to face with own demise, he recognized that nothing is more important than community. The last words he penned in the margins of the novel he was reading were, “Happiness only real when shared.” 

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Staten Island has been in desperate need of third spaces for as long as I can remember. Spaces where people can gather to create, socialize, or simply be that aren’t their place of work or their home. As a teenager and young adult, I spent countless hours in whatever version of the Muddy Cup occupied 388 Van Duzer Street. A cafe by day and bar/venue by night, The Cup was the de facto epicenter of the local arts scene for well over a decade. The venue’s fruitless attempts at rebranding and its eventual shuttering left a vacancy in the lives of many local creatives, myself included. Other venues popped up in the vacuum, but, in typical Staten Island fashion, had little staying-power. 

Since opening in August of 2025, Sequoia Cafe has filled that void for me and others like me who need a place to hang out at night without feeling obligated to drink alcohol. Co-owners Nick Balzomo and Kat Maldonado combined their love of board games and of baking to create a space that is conducive to community-building and collaboration. Sequoia hosts monthly open mics, craft workshops, Dungeons and Dragons sessions, and foreign language meet ups, to name only a few activities and events. I recognized that the two of them and I share the value of bringing people together in healthy and productive ways. It didn’t take long for me to propose the idea of founding a run club based out of their cafe. 

I waited until spring of this year to organize the first meeting of the club. (Even dedicated runners avoid running in the winter when possible). The community’s response to our Instagram post advertising the inaugural run was a genuine surprise. Over a hundred people liked the post, and several left comments celebrating the fact that a club like ours was finally forming on Staten Island. Run clubs proliferated in New York after Covid, but the overwhelming majority of them are based elsewhere. A recent Reddit post to r/RunNYC cataloging the city’s run clubs listed over thirty clubs in Manhattan and over twenty in Brooklyn compared to just one in Staten Island.  Natives are accustomed to exorbitant commute times, but to bookend thirty minutes of running with two hours on the MTA is understandably a deterrent. It seemed as though people in my circle and in Sequoia's circle were waiting for someone to make it happen here. 

Our first session was on April 26, and we could not have asked for more perfect conditions. I led our group of nine runners down Bay Street, toward Fort Wadsworth. The planned route was through the Fort and down the South Beach boardwalk where we would turn around at the fishing pier near Seaview Avenue and Father Cap. When I mapped it out on Strava, it was a four mile run. The real distance was just over six miles. I didn’t intend for our first run to be a trial by fire, but the entire group made it back to Sequoia with no injuries and smiles on their faces. 

Every meeting since has followed different variations of the same route. The path from Sequoia to the Boardwalk does not feature the most forgiving terrain, but runners are rewarded with stunning views of Fort Wadsworth, and the Verrazano bridge, and with the din of Staten Islanders enjoying the beach. To sweeten the deal, Sequoia offers discounted cold brew to participants, and a punch card that can be redeemed for a free coffee or pastry, or two free hours of gaming upon completion. They offer a wide array of vegan baked goods and espresso-based drinks, all of which are among the best you can get on Staten Island. (The olive oil-citrus cake is unreal, as is the coquito latte). 

The runners in our club are all at different skill levels. Some of us are former (or current) Olympic hopefuls, while others have yet to run a full mile without having to walk. The diversity of ability in our group is a strength, not a detriment. Everyone has someone to run or to walk with at their own pace. They can push each other or they can choose to take it easy if their body is suggesting they do so. When the last few members of the group arrive back at the cafe, we celebrate with applause, high-fives, and a group photo. This is the beauty of community and of shared struggle. Running with the Sequoia Run Club doesn’t change the fact that you are competing against yourself, it simply gives you the chance to do so alongside someone else. Getting in a few miles with new friends, hearing their stories and talking through their problems as we try to catch our breath, sharing their struggles and their triumphs: These are the things that make me hate running a little less.