I thought I was picking up a sports book with race as an element, but instead it Running While Black is a race book, with sports as a context. Ultimately I was glad about that, but it took me a second to switch gears. I prefer the biographical focus actually, to less embodied nonfiction. 

Desir is a Haitian- and Colombian-American overachiever who finds herself aimless after graduating from Columbia with substance dependency, as well as her degree. Training for a marathon helped her with some issues but woke her to others. I mean, not woke her to race and racism because she was an activist from childhood, teaching her classmates and teachers about Black history, historical figures, and perspectives. She gets her badass back as she struggles to find Black community in distance running. When she doesn't find it, she pretty much creates that culture in Harlem, even as she struggles with Black men to make shit happen. White people are a much bigger challenge, of course, and how Desir and other collaborators of color could survive clueless DEI efforts and eventually improve them is miraculous.