On Wednesday evenings as the sun sets over Salinas, about 80 young adults gather every week in the parking lot of Everett Alvarez High School in the Creekbridge neighborhood.
As 6:30pm hits, they’re lacing their shoes, lining up ready to stretch and move their bodies after a long day of work to prepare for an almost three-mile run. Known as the After Run Club and led by 28-year-old Jorge Sanchez, who is originally from Mexico but raised in Salinas, the ritual has quietly become a growing movement in just five months.
The run club has become a quiet mantra among runners: a reminder that they come back not just for fitness, but for resilience and community. Even during the World Cup games, some of the runners are in their colorful soccer jerseys and are ready to sweat.
“There's times when you don't want to run, and there's times when you get out from work, or recently had some hardships, and you don't want to do anything,” Sanchez says. “I hear some of our runners tell someone else, ‘hey, this is why we show up, right? Because we're the after-run club, we show up when things are tough.’”
The After Run Club was founded in February by Sanchez, a photographer for the Monterey Bay FC and a track and cross-country coach for Rancho San Juan High School. Sanchez says there are plenty of reasons he started a running club, but mainly it was a motivation to bring the community together as he saw a missing gap in Salinas’ running scene.
“I didn't want to drive to Monterey, San Francisco, San Jose to experience a club that I wanted to be a part of,” Sanchez says. “I wanted more of a younger audience, someone that I can relate to, go out and have some fun.”
He says the run club is intended for people over the age of 18 and anyone from around the county and surrounding communities can join.
Initially it began with just Sanchez and his friend running, but as he promoted it through social media, posting videos and photos, more people slowly appeared. He chose Everett Alvarez High School as the meeting spot because he knew the area was safe to run as an alumni, as safety is his priority given the club has many beginning runners.
“And then from there just slowly grew to maybe three and then four, and then 14 people,” Sanchez says. “The most I've counted have been 100 people, one time.”
People are not just coming from within Salinas but also Soledad, Greenfield, Watsonville and most recently people from the peninsula, according to Sanchez.
He also decided to meet in the evenings as he is not a morning person and prefers to run during sunsets.
27-year-old David Herrera, born in Durango, Mexico comes to After Runs Club from Seaside and learned about it through social media and decided to join as he wanted to get back into running.
“I push myself a little more when there's other people not because they're telling me but because you feel it,” he says. “I found this is one of the biggest run clubs and this is the one that occurs during the week not just on weekends like other run clubs I attended in the past.”
Sometimes Herrera is joined by a friend who drives from Carmel.
“The thing that makes us different is that I'm a running coach, so I'm able to give people advice, and I'm able to have a warm up correctly,” Sanchez added. “I would say we try to provide things for runners to do after, drinking coffee, we have music, it no longer turns into a run club, or we just think about running like a social event, so there's a lot of networking happening behind the scenes.”
Sanchez partners with Shey Gibson, founder of The Grounds 831 to provide coffee, matcha and lemonade for the runners to enjoy afterwards.
“Our motto is grounds worth gathering on and we try not to focus on selling the beverage, but rather trying to gather over the beverage and having a drink with each other."
Gibson began bringing coffee to the runs when the group was small, giving it away for free. Now as the club has grown, he shifted to selling the drinks as a portion of the proceeds goes back to the running club and helps support the activities.
With her pink leggings and ponytail, 29-year-old Daniela Santos is always looking forward to the evening run despite being a beginning runner and enjoys the music after the run while having a space to connect with people and bringing games including mini UNO.
“I joined in April after the club popped up on my instagram feed and my coworker joined me and since it's on Wednesdays we made a whole thing to wear pink and it's been fun,” she says. “My pace right now is 30 minutes and this is perfect for me meeting once a week because I’m not trying to train for a marathon.”
Sanchez does plan to expand to more days including Mondays for more advanced runners or people who want to run more miles in what he will call “Mile Mondays.” Plus, he eventually wants to also add “Hill Repeat Fridays,” for those who want to train for a race and run more hills.