6 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JULY 30-AUGUST 5, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com 831 About 80 young adults gather in the parking lot of Everett Alvarez High School in North Salinas. It’s 6:30pm and 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 threemile 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 Wednesday evening ritual has quietly become a growing movement in just five months. The run club has become a 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 were in their colorful soccer jerseys, 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 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 or 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, more people slowly appeared. “And then from there it 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 from the Monterey Peninsula, according to Sanchez. David Herrera, 27, born in Durango, Mexico, came to the After Run Club from Seaside after learning about it through social media and decided to join 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.” With her pink leggings and ponytail, Daniela Santos, 29, always looks forward to the evening run despite being a beginning runner. She enjoys having a space to connect with people. “I joined in April after the club popped up on my Instagram feed and my coworker joined me. 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 partners with Shey Gibson, founder of The Grounds 831, to provide coffee, matcha and lemonade for the runners to enjoy afterward. 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 with a portion of the proceeds going back to the running club to help support the activities. Sanchez plans to expand to more days including Mondays for more advanced runners or people who want to run a longer distance in what he will call “Mile Mondays.” Plus, he eventually wants to add “Hill Repeat Fridays,” for those who want to train for a race and run more hills. “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 adds. “I would say we try to provide things for runners to do after, drinking coffee, we have music, so there’s a lot of networking happening behind the scenes.” Running Start A Salinas high school track coach turned sunset hour into a community movement. By Royvi Hernandez “We show up when things are tough.” TALES FROM THE AREA CODE MANUEL LOPEZ The After Run Club meets in the evenings in Salinas. Founder Jorge Sanchez says he is not a morning person and prefers to run during sunsets—and judging by the growing numbers of participants, it seems many others agree.
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