It's Saturday morning, and I'm meeting up with a group of runners for my morning run for the first time in my life. I arrive at the park early and hurry to stretch at the meetup area. The spot is a relatively manicured graveled track.

After 10 minutes of high knee drills and butt kicks, the group starts to trickle in. It's an even mix of men and women of all shapes and sizes. One by one, they introduce themselves. A few even loft some corny runner jokes to ease the nervousness that's visible on my face.

As we headed off on the run, I trailed to the back of the pack and looked around. "I'm the only black person here," I think. Unphased, I shrug it off and run into the middle of the pack. While the group and the run were terrific, it didn't take away the silent tension within me of being different.

Much time has gone by since that day. I've run with countless groups and participated in numerous races. The one thing that is most common in it all is that no matter the place, the group, or the running event, I am one of the handful, if not the only black person participating.

In my research to find what could be causing the absence of black runners in recreational running, I discovered multiple studies mentioned two topics. Those topics were individual interest in physical activities and access to resources to perform these physical activities.

Studies show that African American adults' interest in performing physical activities is down. A survey published by the CDC examined the physical inactivity outside of work of adults in 49 states from 2017 to 2020.

The survey results showed among racial groups, non-Hispanic Asian adults had the lowest prevalence of physical inactivity outside of work (20.1%), followed by non-Hispanic White adults (23.0%). The racial groups with the highest prevalence of physical inactivity were non-Hispanic American Indian/Alaska Native adults (29.1%), non-Hispanic Black adults (30.0%), and Hispanic adults (32.1%)

One of the significant factors attributed to a higher percentage of physical inactivity is the socio-economic disparities between racial groups.

A 2020 study published by the census bureau found that African Americans had the highest poverty rate at 19.5 percent among all major racial groups. Therefore African Americans are more likely to live in a place that doesn't have the infrastructure (safe neighborhoods, paved sidewalks, and parks) to encourage outdoor physical activity.

To bridge the physical activity gap, local governments, business leaders, and ordinary citizens that can afford it will need to invest in recreational resources for poorer communities. These investments will help create new interest in recreational running for minorities.

The change would not happen overnight, but one thing is for sure: seeing a black runner in a running group or race event could become less of a rarity and more of the norm.