Allow Racecheck to use cookies on this browser?

Keith Johnston is the founder of Running2bwell, an organisation whose mission is to help people develop healthier lifestyles with the objective of better mental health. A personal story triggered Keith to tackle a huge problem, the addiction epidemic, through the power of sport. Since then, thousands of people have taken part in Running2bwell-led community programs, inspiring people from all walks of life, from prison inmates to people who had never exercised before, to use exercise as a complimentary treatment tool all the way to tackling their first 5k. From an event organisation perspective, Keith’s strong sense of mission and community-first approach has also created a very unorthodox but effective way to incubate and create strong communities. It is an insightful conversation that provides many clues and learnings for organisers looking for ways to create and strengthen communities around their events.

Alexander Tanti: Keith, fantastic to have you as part of the series, and I understand that what you do started with a reason very close to your heart. People organise races for a bunch of different reasons, but I feel yours is very, very special. So maybe we can start by giving me a little bit about your background and how you started getting into this industry.

Keith Johnston: Thank you, Alex, for having me. So I’m actually an engineer by training, and I retired early because I started this group back in 2016, and then it just grew and grew to the point where I needed to do this full-time. So right now, running2bewell is my full-time gig, and as I tell everybody, I’m working way harder than I’ve ever worked for way less money. But I’m the happiest I’ve ever been in my life. So I love doing what I do and get to do what I love.

So, the basis of running2bwell is that we’re trying to help people learn how to use exercise to improve their mental health and improve their recovery from any sort of addiction. It all started at a friend’s funeral when he lost his son to an overdose. I was in a running club with him, and we knew running helped our mental health. I’ve struggled with addictions for a very long time, and I know that it helps me.

So it all sort of came together in that moment, and I just kind of had the epiphany of let’s just start a little running group to help people because, honestly, some of the problems with regular running groups is that they don’t fit people with mental health or addiction struggles. Most running groups go out for a beer after the workout. And so that’s not helpful for people in recovery. Secondly, most running groups are focused on performance. They’re not so much focused on the social aspect of it. Some more are now, but it’s all about your pace. And hey, we’re going to go out for an easy 20 miles. But you, the new runner, get left behind right because you can’t keep up with the group, and then you’re running on your own. So that’s why we felt like we needed our own group.

Alexander Tanti: From what I understand, you welcome a range of different skill sets and levels. You also encourage people just to walk or just keep moving.

Keith Johnston: Yeah.

Alexander Tanti: What does a typical week look like for you? How do you organise these sessions?

Keith Johnston: So, we have ten different groups right now, in northeast Ohio, and there’s other groups across the country doing the same thing that we’re doing, which is fantastic. I meet with all these different groups; they’re all different because some of them are based within a treatment facility. We have one group that’s based in a prison. We have community-based groups that all have their different vibe, but the commonality between it all is that we get together and we’re trying to introduce each other and greet each other and build a little bit of community so that people can have that social connection. And then we warm up, we go out for 20 minutes then back, either walk or run so that we start together and then at least we finish together.

We encourage all paces, but we try to encourage people to push the pace a little bit. It’s not just a stroll. Because the science is really clear that your dopamine and your endorphins and that sort of stuff are released in direct proportion to your heart rate, so get your heart rate up.

We use lots of taglines to communicate stuff, get your heart rate up, get your mood up. Or when you’re active, you’re happy, so just get up and move. It’s all different paces. And so we start out, and we usually go to local parks, and then we come back together. We chat a little bit. We talk about life, we talk about recovery, we talk about mental health, and then we go home. It’s about an hour, hour and a half.

That’s our weekly groups, and then, from that standpoint, we try to get people to work towards a 5K. Even if it’s walking, whatever, it doesn’t matter because you’re setting a goal. And then, we have to learn how to commit to those goals. And there’s all sorts of tools that we use for that, and we put on a number of races ourselves. And that’s how I got to know your organization because the races are really important for us, even though we didn’t start off that way. And I resisted organising our first race. I had to be pushed by our other board members to do it because I didn’t want to be a race director — it’s a very stressful job.

So we started some races because the races are important for us and not only is it a good way for us to raise money. It’s also a great way to raise awareness of what we’re doing. More importantly, it’s a great way for us to take our own weekly participants, plug them into an event and say, Okay, we’re all going to train for this event. We’ve got this event six weeks out. So we’re going to work on our goals.

Alexander Tanti: Are those events open to everybody or just people within the support groups?

Keith Johnston: Absolutely, because we want to normalize it as much as possible, and we take groups to other races too, which is great, but I was just talking with one of our participants who’s been in and out of recovery for a number of years, and he grew up in the hood. And so he really hasn’t experienced this segment of our society where people are encouraging and supporting one another and cheering people instead of trying to steal or kill each other, trying to harm each other. It’s not a dog-eat-dog world, and so it’s totally different vibes. So I asked, and I just took him to a Marathon relay. What’s different about being in this environment versus your day-to-day is that he said, “I can just relax. I can let my guard down, I don’t feel stretched. I don’t have to watch my back. I’m in a crowd of 7,000 people at a marathon. And I don’t have to watch my back” and it’s just refreshing for him.

Alexander Tanti: Organised sport within a community is such a force of nature, and it can really transform your life. I’ve also experienced that in my life. The purpose behind Racecheck is to help people find life-transforming experiences and help organizers get the feedback they need to improve their events so they can get to a point where they’re offering life-transforming events. So, I can speak to that for sure.

My understanding is that you’re really supporting the people to take that first step, even by giving them shoes, for example.

Keith Johnston: Yeah, that’s what we’re known for, and some people do take advantage of that, and I’m like, okay, that’s your choice to take advantage, but we’re really proud of our shoe program at running2bwell. When people come to at least two meetings, we provide them with a pair of running shoes donated by our local running shoe store, Fleet Feet. Actually, the guy owns five stores in the Cleveland market, and he donates hundreds of shoes to us. We’ve given out 500 pairs, and this year’s our biggest year ever.

We give them out as a reward and as a tool in their recovery, and we say if you take this tool and you don’t use it, it doesn’t do any good. It’s just like me having a brand new drill in my barn, and I never take it out of the package. Right? Or if they take the shoes in to trade for something else, which happens sometimes in the treatment centres, and that’s okay, that’s their choice. Then they’ve just traded away a tool, and now they’re not going to be able to build a new life. Those shoes are a tool that you can use to build your new life. If you want a new life, you have to work for it.

That’s another thing that I tell people all the time: I cannot exercise for you, and I cannot recover for you. But I can encourage you. I can give you tools, I can show you how to use them, but brother, you got to do it. Life recovery is not a spectator sport. You have to put in the work, and that’s what makes us different from other recovery programs, like counselling or 12-step programs or that sort of thing. Those can be very passive. Sit down, shut up and listen. Not here. Here you get out there, and you sweat, and you put some sweat equity into this thing, and then you’re going to get something out of it.

Alexander Tanti: Do you see people that use these groups as their primary form of treatment? Or does it tend to be complementary with other treatment types?

Keith Johnston: There is a spectrum. I mean, some people just don’t get into the sport, and that’s fine. And then, for some people, it’s integrated into their counselling. And that’s actually what we recommend because, really, running can’t be your only thing in recovery. You have to do the other work, right? You need to deal with your emotions and your thoughts and that sort of stuff, and you need to get a counsellor for that. But exercise plays a big part in learning how to regulate your emotions. The science is really clear on it, too. There was a study done in Australia that showed that regular exercise is one and a half times more effective than counselling and pharmaceutical treatment for depression, and that mirrors similar results from numerous studies. So, there’s something scientific about exercise, mental health and addiction. But you still need to do the other work too, you still have to talk about your problems, you still have to get some help there.

Alexander Tanti: Yeah, absolutely. I want to go back to that point where you took the decision to do something about the addiction epidemic. Tell me a little bit more about that moment. What was it like for you?

Keith Johnston: It was a very visceral moment. I mean, I remember it vividly. I remember where I was sitting and who I was talking to at that moment in time. it was a feeling of powerlessness and hopelessness but then hope.

It was this complete flipping of the script. I went from this point of grief, and my God, to somebody’s got to do something about this. What can I do? I’m an engineer. I’m not a counsellor. I don’t want to go back to school, I’m too old for that, I don’t want to go back and get a degree. I don’t want to shift careers per se. But I can do this, I can start this little group. I just knew that exercise helped me, and I’ve struggled with addictions for 50 years. It took me a while to realize that I had a problem. I’d wrestled with addictions before, but I dealt with it as if it was some kind of moral failing. Like I’m a bad person, and I’ve got this bad habit. I’ve got this thing that I want to stop, but I can’t, I never thought of it as an addiction. This is something that’s going on inside my brain that is something that’s miswired. There’s some maladaptive behaviour that I’m engaging in.

So, I didn’t understand it on that level, but as I dug into it, I was like, wow, I’ve got this problem, but I’ve also got this solution.

Alexander Tanti: It’s typical that when you start helping others, you end up helping yourself, and that sort of becomes a conduit for healing, doesn’t it?

Keith Johnston: Yes, it’s beautiful. It’s been beautiful, man.

Alexander Tanti: And so, what was the first step that you took? Was it literally creating some sort of Facebook group and decided I’m gonna start getting people to meet at a specific place at a specific time every week? I’m just thinking of it from somebody who would love to do something similar. How do they start?

Keith Johnston: It did start that way. I was already part of a local running club here in our community, and they’re like an RRCA Road Runner Club of America chapter. And so that was all I knew of the running community at that point, and I was pretty new to distance running. I didn’t really start running until I was like 48. So this was probably almost 20 years ago. I’m getting old.

Alexander Tanti: You don’t look it.

Keith Johnston: I don’t act it most days, either. So yeah, I was already part of that group and said, Hey, I’d like to start this thing. And just kind of make it a segment of the local running group. But, I quickly found out that I needed to distance myself from that because of the drinking part (post-workout socials) and also because they actually said, Hey man, this is bigger than we want to handle. So you go do your own thing. And then it was just a matter of leveraging social media and other relationships that I had to say, Hey, I’ve got this idea. Is anybody interested in it? It grew slowly, and then it kind of took off as we started connecting with treatment facilities.

Because a lot of times, people out here in the real world, I don’t want to say it that way, but in regular communities that don’t have a diagnosed problem or they don’t have a court-ordered treatment program, they’re not ready to deal with their problems. And they shouldn’t be, right, because then you have to come to that decision on your own or until you break the law and then the criminal justice system steps in and makes you face your problems. But some people can be really heavy drinkers or have some other issues, and you can tell them all day long, every hour of the day, hey, you got a problem. But until they recognize it themselves, nothing’s gonna change.

So that’s why I kind of had to move away from local running groups. I still engage with them, and I try to get them to come because we need mentors and because I need volunteers to come in and run the groups, as I can’t do them all. So I still have a good relationship with some groups, but then other groups, they’re just like, that’s cute. You’re doing this nice little thing, but we’re gonna go over here to the bar and celebrate.

Alexander Tanti: Yeah. It’s just a different kind of culture, I guess. And that’s fine.

Keith Johnston: Yeah.

Alexander Tanti: Every group has their own ways of doing things, and if it gets people active, then that’s something at least.

Keith Johnston: Exactly. We’ve all got to find our own path to happiness. But what I wanted to say is that another really important reason for us to do races and engage with the running community is that we didn’t have mentors. Still, we also need mentors who just walk because a lot of people in our groups, probably the majority of the people in our groups just walk, and that’s fine. I need people to come in and just walk because it’s about that connection and the support.

Alexander Tanti: When you first reached out to treatment centres to talk to them about what you do, were they receptive? Or did you find a lot of resistance to start with?

Keith Johnston: They’re very receptive. They want programming like this to come in because they recognize that It has value to the recovery and mental health outcomes. They know the science but every time I talked with a new administrator, they’re like, yeah, yeah, we know all that. But they don’t have the staff or the funding to do something like this on a regular basis. The way it works here stateside is, that most of this is paid for by Medicaid insurance. Or even if it’s mandated by the court, it’s still Medicaid. But then exercise is not a billable thing, right? And honestly, I don’t want it to be because I don’t want to be in the business of billing Medicaid and doing all that because then it just becomes a mess.

So they want to do it, but they don’t have the resources to do it. So they’re happy for us to come in and provide it because we don’t charge them anything. And we do our fundraising through our races, and we’re able to do everything that way. But the facilities and the treatment industry are very interested in having us help out.

Alexander Tanti: I guess you could have just partnered up with existing races to support your cause, but I suspect the reason for you actually organizing your own races was because you needed a funding source. Is that correct?

Keith Johnston: Yeah. I mean, it really was more than just the funding; it was the community aspect, and all our races have a really fun vibe. We’re not trying to be like a Boston qualifier or, RCA championship or anything like that. We want a chilled, fun vibe. One of our mottos is we’re not finished until we’re all finished. So, anytime we have a race, we encourage the winners to get back out there on the course to run with the slower runners and cheer them on. To try to build that community. And we celebrate the final runner more than we celebrate the first runner.

Alexander Tanti: That’s incredible. Yeah.

Keith Johnston: You got to cheer because, honestly, that is the most important runner to me. That person there had the courage to start. That’s their first 5K, or recovering from cancer or something like that. That’s the one that needs the most encouragement. So, those were the reasons why we wanted to start our own races. We do take teams to other races. We took three teams to the Akron marathon here. Just this last weekend. And that’s fantastic because the races are very generous with us. They give us entries, and they help us raise some money, and then we take some of our participants there. So that’s a great vibe, too.

But our races are special to us, and so we want to keep that. And grow it.

Alexander Tanti: It sounds special. And what’s super interesting is that it almost sounds like you’re going about it the opposite way from most race organisers I speak to. Most decide to organise a race and then try to build a community around it. And most of them find that very challenging to do. In your case, you build the community around a common cause first, and the race becomes a celebration or a goal for the community. Everybody connects with each other because they’ve shared common experiences through their addiction recovery, and then the race becomes almost like a celebration of weeks or months of struggling and working together. So, the race becomes an evolution of that community rather than creating a race and then trying to build a community around it. That’s very interesting.

Keith Johnston: Yeah, and I never even thought of it that way. I mean, I have to think about that idea a little bit, but I get people coming to me all the time, other race directors or people part of a nonprofit, and they want to put on a race. The first thing I tell them is that you probably shouldn’t do it if what you’re trying to do is just raise money. Because we all know this as race directors, you’re not going to make much money on the registration fees, right? You’re doing okay if you break even, maybe make five bucks a runner or something like that, by the time you pay all your costs. You’re going to make money in your sponsorship. And sponsors are gonna support you because they’re supporting your cause. So why don’t you start there with sponsors? Ask them, “What would you like in an event? What would serve you as an organization sponsoring it?”. Whether it’s a business sponsoring you or if it’s some other organisation like a church or some other nonprofit. What is that sponsor’s need? Or if they just want to support your program, then they should just support your program, and you shouldn’t put race on because It’s a lot of work to make five bucks. Let me tell you. This is no way to make a living, right?

If you have the community, then leverage your community, find out what they want, what they need, what serves them, and what is going to help you build that community and then work on your event. Because that’s the way to go about it, and that’s what we did. I have lots of organisations supporting me that aren’t doing it for the marketing exposure. Now, as we’ve grown, we do have some businesses coming in trying to leverage the exposure to more people. But that doesn’t happen at first, You’ve got this tiny little event that you’re struggling to get a hundred people to, and nobody’s going to advertise there.

Alexander Tanti: When was your first event?

Keith Johnston: 2018.

Alexander Tanti: And that started with 100 people, I guess?

Keith Johnston: I think we had just over 200, which, looking back, is amazing for a brand new race out of the box to get 200 people.

Alexander Tanti: Indeed, and then five years on how many events do you now put on with how many participants?

Keith Johnston: We’ve had three major events this year in 2023, and we had 1500 plus. We’ve also had a couple of minor ones at the prison where we have our prison group.

We’ve put on one event there already. We did a 5K and a half marathon inside the prison yard. So, 18 loops. And we had some outside runners come in for that. The warden let us invite a small group of people in. So I think we had 15 or so come to that, but we had 90 of the inmates running. So, that was great.

Alexander Tanti: That’s special.

Keith Johnston: Yeah, we’re doing another 5K and 10K with them. So I’d say, all told, there are probably 1700 participants this year.

Alexander Tanti: How was the transition from being a group coordinator to a race director? From the sounds of it, you didn’t have much fun. But there has to be something about it that you must love. Is it seeing the people cross that finish line that makes it special for you and keeps you going?

Keith Johnston: You hit the nail on the head, man, especially seeing some of my own participants from our groups that I’ve been training and I’ve been helping. Now, I’m not a great runner, and like I said, I didn’t start running until I was older. I’m a fair runner. I mean, I can win my age group at most small races. There are still lots of faster older guys around this area. How can you be 60 and run an 18-minute 5K? This just does not make sense. But I’ve got some friends like that, that are my age, that are running under 20.

And I’m like, no, that ain’t going to happen for me. So I mean for me to see some of my own guys or girls cross that finish line, and I give him that high five, and I look them in the eye, and I say, What did you just do? “I just ran my first 5K”. Yes, you did that, and you can do more. You can take this confidence in yourself and your ability to commit and follow through on your commitments and train and work through the pain and the days that you didn’t want to do it, and you can apply that to the rest of your life.

That’s my passion. So, yes, we need the money; we need to raise the money to buy the shoes and all that. But what drives me personally to spend all that time doing all the race registration stuff and ordering shirts, and metals, and all that is me looking forward to that moment. But it was a difficult transition. Man, I did not want to be a race director; like I said earlier, it just wasn’t my cup of tea. I’m not a details person; I’m a big-picture, passionate guy, but the details overwhelm me quickly. But I’ve got a good team around me. People who fill in the gaps in my skill set. One of my board members, Becky, was a former caterer, so, Hey, Becky, can you handle all the food and water? “Yeah, I got this”. I’d go crazy doing that stuff.

Alexander Tanti: Have you found people who finished your events and have progressed and recovered to a point where they’re now leading groups themselves? Have you seen that happen?

Keith Johnston: Yeah. We have a number of our own mentors that have come up through the program, and they’ve become a participant, then mentors, and then even board members. So, yeah, I’ve seen a lot of progression now.

It’s slow. I mean, in this business of recovery and mental health, our brains are exceedingly complicated. And when they get broken by addiction or mental health, there’s no simple fix, and there’s no quick fix. You hear these stories: I just decided to quit and haven’t had a drop in 30 years. That almost never happens. Almost never.

So we’ve had a couple of mentors doing great, and then we plug them into being a mentor, and then they struggled and relapsed. And so, we had to kind of back off on that because you don’t want them having that extra pressure to perform. It’s not like a punishment because that’s the last thing somebody in recovery needs. More guilt and shame. They need support, but at the same time, they need time to heal and grow. Because our brains are very plastic, they can grow, but it takes a long time and a lot of effort and healing.

Alexander Tanti: Yeah. What you’re doing is just very noble, and recently, with Netflix and TV shows, there’s a lot more awareness about these issues. I was just watching this show about opioids, and the extent of the problem is just scary. I had no idea it’s as bad as it is, and it almost feels like we need to find ways to accelerate and support the initiatives that bring solutions. How can we 10x what you’re doing? How can we create this sense of urgency that needs to be done now by more people with a lot more intensity?

Keith Johnston: That’s a great question; so, first off, I would say it’s way bigger than the opioid problem. As bad as that is, if you look at the statistics, smoking here in the US kills more people every year than alcohol and all the overdose drugs, opioids, fentanyl, meth. Overeating and diabetes kill more than all of those combined. So what we’ve got here is not an opioid epidemic. We have an addiction epidemic.

We need to make sure that we’re not just pointing the finger at those people who have the opioid problem. It’s all of us who have some addiction and have some mental health problems. You mentioned when we first started the conversation about arsonism, the fires in Greece and how there are people with struggles that made them set the fires intentionally. A mental health problem destroyed a whole forest. That’s going to damage the environment and our lives in our communities for generations because this mental health issue went on without being treated.

I’m not directly connecting mental health and criminal activity because I don’t want there to be that stigma either that this mental health person is gonna commit a crime, but that is what happened. And when I go into the prisons, there are two million people incarcerated here in the United States. Two million. We have the highest incarceration rate of any other country. The vast majority of those are related somehow to drug activity, but if you stop and think about criminal activity, that is kind of like a mental problem. I’m probably getting a little bit out of my lane here, but the broad picture I’m trying to paint here is that we are all messed up to some degree. We all have issues, we all have addictions.

So that’s the first thing we need to do, is to energise people because if we just focused on “oh, it’s those people”, then we don’t care, right? But if it’s my family, if it’s my son, if it’s my daughter, if it’s my mom, then I’m more motivated to help. So I think that’s one of the first things to do, and the second thing that needs to happen is that we need to realise that we can all do something to help. You don’t have to have a degree in counselling. Just listen to somebody; just sit down and listen to somebody. Just go for a walk with them. Go for a run with them. Care about what happens to them. Don’t just focus on yourself.

One of our groups last night went to a lady’s treatment facility, and I wasn’t there, but one of the mentors took them to a local park, and there’s a zip line there. Here are these ladies in their 30s, 40s, and 50s playing on a zipline, like a kid’s zip line. And they just had the most glorious time. They didn’t run; they didn’t get much exercise. They just walked, but they just had a beautiful time of connection. And here, these ladies are all court-ordered. Most of them have children themselves, And they’re in this facility for 30 to 45 days; they can’t leave except for when we take them out to go to a park and to play like kids a little bit. So we need to put it in people’s minds that it’s not that hard. Just spend some time with some people, connect with them and care.

And then go home. You’ve done your part.

Alexander Tanti: Yeah.

Keith Johnston: You did your part making this world a better place, so I think those are the two things that if I could communicate to the world, is: One, we’re all messed up, but two, we all have something that we can contribute.

Alexander Tanti: Ignoring the addict within yourself, whether that’s social media, procrastination or self-defeating behaviours. It’s almost like you need to say enough is enough and push yourself into action and say, “ I hate this. But I recognise this habit that I have or addiction is just not good for me, so let’s fuel that energy into some positive action”. And as you say, it doesn’t have to be creating a charity or becoming Jesus. You can just walk with your neighbour and connect and ask them if everything’s okay. And one thing will probably lead to another, but this is a great point.

Keith Johnston: Yeah, you don’t have to start a chapter; just go for a walk yourself and then go for a walk with your neighbour.

Socrates said, If you’re feeling depressed, go for a walk. If you’re still feeling depressed, go for a longer walk. He knew this 2500 years ago.

Alexander Tanti: You must have witnessed some incredibly transformative experiences with people when you’re in groups. I was just wondering if there are any that really stand out, I’d love to hear of any stories that you might have that really made an impact personally for you.

Keith Johnston: Man, I’ve got it right off the top of my head. So my buddy, Nick, I’ve known him for six years, and he has been in and out of treatment programs; he works really hard. And just has had lots of struggles. It’s really hard to break these addictions and these addictive patterns and the mental health struggles because he also has mental health struggles, along with his addictions. So, I’ve loved this young man for years, and we’ve connected. And he’s been a part of our programs, and he’s now becoming one of our mentors. I took him to the Akron Marathon Relay last weekend, and it was a big relay. There were 7,000 participants, and we had a relay team, and he practically lived on the course of the race. But I had to drive him to the exchange zone because he’d never done something like that before, and I didn’t want him to get overwhelmed.

So, I took him there to make sure that he was in the right position at the right time. So we’re driving to the race, and early in the morning, all the roads are starting to close down, so we’re manoeuvring all that. We get from his house up to the parking area, and he’s like, “I forgot my watch back at the house” and I’m like, crap. All right. Let’s give it a try. We’ll get the watch.

So we drove back to his place, got the watch and parked in time. We had to jog about ¾ mile to the exchange zone, and we got there with plenty of time. Then he realized he lost his phone. Since he had to wait for the real runner, I ran back to the car to look for the phone. But…no phone, so I started running back to the exchange zone. By this time, I was getting very frustrated, and I started praying that I could find the phone. I’m not exaggerating; within a few seconds, I spotted the phone in the middle of the sidewalk of the college campus. I’d had just run right past it, but there it was. Thank you, God. I took him the phone and off he went.

With all this chaos (we had 3 teams of 5 in the relay) and Nick wasn’t the only logistical hassle, I was already feeling discouraged and still had to get to my relay leg and run it. Wondering why I even do all this. Then, out of the blue, I get a text from Nick. He had finished his leg and wanted to thank me for all the lives I’ve changed and said that “with each step I take today, I’m helping another heart keep beating”. Man, I was undone!!! It’s all worth it, all the hassles, late nights planning events, endless deadlines and details… to know that I’m making a difference in someone’s life for the better. That’s all I need to keep me going.

Alexander Tanti: Thank you, Keith. I really appreciate you opening up like this and truly hope that this conversation inspires other organisers to use their events as a tool for positive change and to empower their own communities to do and be more for themselves and others.