Athletics Ontario Running Podcast · John Shep

EP 195: Alejandro De La Cruz, Running Waters - In a New York (Marathon) State of Mind

·41 min

John Shep opens by connecting Alejandro de la Cruz to the broader Athletics Ontario running community. The conversation starts with the obvious headline, Alejandro’s upcoming New York City Marathon. It moves quickly past the race and into how he actually became a runner. He says he tried running many times as a 20-year-old. He also tried it a few times in high school. It never really stuck when he was younger. Team sports came first. Basketball, soccer, and baseball shaped his early athletic life. Running on its own arrived much later. A buddy he knew while working in California helped pull him back into it. That was the start of a different relationship with the sport. The episode then shifts toward the work around Running Waters. Alejandro talks about arriving in Ontario as someone new to the area and not Canadian. He was careful about that. He did not want to show up and act like he already knew what the community needed. So he spent time figuring out who was already doing the work. He looked for existing groups first. He reached out online and through Instagram. He met people like Trene Hancock, Amy Kettrick, and Melanie Merzot. He also connected with Vince Cooper and the Steel Town Athletic Club. Vince’s advice mattered. Alejandro says it felt awkward to invite people out by the water and ask them to trust a new group. He also says he had to get past that feeling. The point was to keep showing up. He describes the first runs as small, even tiny. For a stretch, it was mostly him and Melanie. That reality brought a lot of questions with it. He wondered whether he was the right person for the job. He wondered whether people cared. He wondered how he would even know if the idea was working. Those doubts hung around. They could have stopped the whole thing. Instead, he stayed with it. The episode keeps circling back to welcome, creativity, mentorship, and consistency as the real ingredients of a run club. It treats community building as patient work rather than a polished launch. It also leaves room for the ordinary nerves that come with trying to build something in public. The result is a conversation that feels practical without getting dry. It connects marathon ambition to everyday organizing. It also shows how a single run group can become part of a larger network of runners, mentors, and friends. By the end, the focus is less on bragging rights than on the culture that keeps people coming back. The New York start line is there, but the deeper story is the one about belonging. The whole thing stays rooted in Ontario running life, with enough personal detail to make the stakes clear. It is about running as a practice, and also as a way to build community and make a place feel more familiar.

As heard by us

A grounded running conversation about starting a club, finding footing, and keeping the door open.

Alejandro De La Cruz gives the Athletics Ontario Running Podcast a steady, lived-in running story. The episode traces his path from first taking up running at 20, with a few earlier tries in high school, to helping launch Running Waters in a place where he was new, not local,…

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Why you'd press play

Press play if you want a community-first running story that starts in Ontario and points toward New York City.

Read the full recommendation in PlayNext →

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