The Prolyfyck Run Crew, named after a Nipsey Hussle lyric, runs through predominantly Black neighborhoods in Charlottesville, Virginia.
BY ANNA KATHERINE CLEMMONS
MAR 23, 2021
If there was one thing former football player Ahmad Hawkins was not, it was a runner.
A sprinter, maybe, given his time playing wide receiver and defensive back at the University of Virginia, followed by a decade of professional football, mostly in the Arena Football League. But not a runner.
So when he moved to Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2009, and his barber, William Jones III, invited Hawkins on a run, he declined. “Man, I sprint,” Hawkins told Runner’s World. “I don’t do the jogging stuff.”
Jones had been running in town since 2008, usually solo with his Yorkie. But he always asked clients to join him if they wanted to—and Jones tried to get Hawkins to run with him for much of the next decade.
Finally, in 2019, Hawkins accepted the invite. Jones and Dr. Wes Bellamy, a friend of Hawkins’s, told Hawkins that their running group, the ProlyFyck Run Crew, was organizing an official four-mile race to benefit We Code, Too—a nonprofit founded by Bellamy. Hawkins wanted to support them, so he decided to go for a run by himself, to gauge if he could finish the race.
“That first run was terrible, terrible,” Hawkins, 41, said. “My lower back was killing me, and I was super stiff.” Still, he finished the two miles, barely.
Hawkins began training for the four-mile race on his own months out. His early runs didn’t line up with his son’s bus schedule, but Hawkins persisted, losing 25 pounds on his way to race day. That June, he ran the race with a slight limp, courtesy of his football days, and with his legs covered in KT tape. But he finished his first-ever race.
And that was all Hawkins needed to start joining the ProlyFyck crew on their runs.
n the past year, Prolyfyck (pronounced pro-lif-ic)—which is named after a lyric in Nipsey Hussle’s song ‘Victory Lap,’ “I’m prolific, so gifted / I’m the type that’s gon’ go get it”—has grown to a core group of more than two dozen runners, though the number of runners can exceed 60 or 70 at times. The group meets on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 6 a.m., meeting outside of the Jefferson School, a segregated high school for Black students in the 1920s, and runs a route through Charlottesville’s predominantly Black neighborhoods.
ProlyFyck was cofounded by Jones, who started running the route when he moved to the area in 2006. It attracts an incredibly diverse group of runners: young, old, Black, white, men, women. Some runners are former collegiate track competitors; others, like Hawkins, have never consistently jogged before.
Now, Hawkins is a leader of the group. He greets people as they arrive. When the group stops during the run to wait for one another, he circles back and runs alongside others. He shouts words of encouragement and pumps his fists, like a church preacher on stage.
“[After first meeting him at a run] I said, ‘I love this guy and I don’t even know him,’” ProlyFyck runner Sarah Messer said about Hawkins. “He’s the guy who stops and cheers and waits for everyone. He’s consistently stayed that guy, making sure no one is left behind—especially on hills.”
The hilly route that the crew runs is marked by both busy main streets and quiet neighborhood roads. When navigating particularly steep inclines, group members often yell, “Cold Shower!” reminding each other that sprinting up the hill is like taking a cold shower—you don’t want to do it, but sometimes, you have to.
“The loudness we bring, the energy we bring, I think that’s what makes it attractive,” Jones said.
That volume is what encouraged Charlottesville teaching instructor Shannon Cruthirds to join. Cruthirds lives with her family at an intersection that the group passes through; after several weeks of hearing shouts of ‘Let’s Go!’ and ‘We here!’ she realized one of her colleagues, Bellamy’s wife, Ashley, was running by. She reached out to ask about the group, and Ashley encouraged her to join.
Cruthirds, who called herself a “lapsed runner,” arrived at 5:50 a.m. for a run the next week.
“It felt great,” Cruthirds said. “Most of my run routes were tied to races I had done or neighborhoods that are more familiar. Taking a slightly different path—all it took was a shift of three to four blocks—and I thought, ‘this is rad, I’ve never been here before.’”
On most Fridays, Hawkins addresses the group after the run, offering inspiration and motivation akin to a coach’s halftime speech to his players. Sometimes, he dances; other times, he reminds group members of the power of their actions—“We run for the CAUSE, not the applause,” he said. Often, he encourages everyone to let out a loud yell, releasing all the aggression and adversity that life has brought that week.
“Seeing people of different races running through these impoverished neighborhoods that don’t garner a lot of positive energy, that’s powerful,” Hawkins said. “You’re coming together and learning about each other’s background, opening your eyes to so many folks and what their story is. That’s what I love about it.”
And that is what Prolyfyck has become. In a year marked by a worldwide pandemic, political and racial divides, violence and peaceful protests, the Prolyfyck run crew has pushed against the nation’s divisive narrative, instead building a strong, diverse community that is determined, as they remind one another, to ‘BE THE CHANGE.’
For Jones, running is in his blood. Growing up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, he often watched his grandfather, Nelson Dockery, go out for runs. His grandfather was the only Black runner Jones says he saw outside, aside from the occasional amateur boxer in training.
Jones discovered a similarly quiet running environment when he moved to Charlottesville. In 2009, he had clients from his business—His Image Barber Shop & Natural Hair Studio, which he started in 2008—who joined him on the run occasionally.
In 2017, Bellamy joined Jones, and their informal group was dubbed Run These Streets.
“When we started, we said, ‘we want to run through the neighborhoods so we can break the stereotype that Black people don’t run,’” Bellamy said. “And maybe we can show something positive and encourage others.”
When a poster on the NextDoor neighborhood listserv complained about the “loud joggers” running through the city in the pre-dawn light, the group gave themselves a new nickname: Loud Joggers.
Run These Streets morphed into the ProlyFyck run crew in the spring of 2019, just before the group began their Instagram account, which currently has 1,598 followers. Through social media, they post updates about run meetings and times, special events, and ways they can support one another.
As the weeks passed, they invited more people to join them; through word-of-mouth, the group slowly grew. Six runners one morning, 10 the next. At the start of 2020, the group was typically 12 to 15 runners. Through a GroupMe chat, they challenged each other to run on off-days and push themselves past their ‘comfortable’ mileage. Before long, group members were running six or seven days a week and marathon training together.
In spring of 2020, as the pandemic spread and the nation protested the murders of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and others, more runners began to show up. People wanted to be part of something and support racial justice movements. With COVID-19, people were left with few exercise options as well with gyms and athletic facilities closed down. Prolyfyck offered the best of both worlds: community support and running with people of all races, genders, experiences, and backgrounds coming together. They’re a family.
Jones shared the story of a man who had started running with the group and later found himself homeless. Forced to move 45 minutes outside of Charlottesville, with no legal driver’s license, he still tried to find a way to return at least once a week to run.
“I can’t tell you how many Black people come up to me and say, ‘I see y’all running—I’ve been walking or jogging on my own now after seeing y’all do it,’” Bellamy said. “That was the goal from the beginning. Especially in these public housing sites, to see them happy to see our group coming through. And to have that in Charlottesville, where people associate us with August 11 and 12, 2017 [the dates of the ‘Unite the Right’ white supremacist rally that took place in Charlottesville]. We are more than that, and we show it day after day.”
As the early morning darkness began to fade on a cool November Friday morning, close to 35 runners stood in a circle outside the Jefferson School parking lot, near downtown Charlottesville on that Friday in November. Some wore masks, others had headlamps and reflective vests. Several wore gloves and hats to combat the air’s chill. Jones stood to the side of a parking space, his two pit bulls standing next to him. A mother, chatting with two other women, held the handles of a stroller as her baby daughter slept inside.
“Today, we are running for Ball Hawk’s aunt, who passed away yesterday,” James Dowell, a.k.a. Littlez, another of the group’s most vocal leaders, announced. “Let’s do this for Hawk and his family.
“Cruisers, let’s go!”
A small group of walkers/joggers departed the Jefferson School parking lot, walking on the paved driveway toward the street. Several minutes later, the runners started. Some ran in pairs, others solo. One man ran with his AirPods in, singing along to ‘Still Not a Player,’ as he paced himself.
The fastest runners averaged around a six-and-a-half-minute mile clip as they wound through the Fifeville neighborhood. On the first steep hill, Dowell yelled, “You did this! You didn’t know if you would get up and run but WE ARE HERE AND WE ARE LOUD!”
“Yes sir! Let’s go!” another runner yelled in response.
At the 1.8-mile mark of the route, at the 14th Street and Grady Avenue intersection, each runner sprinted to the top of a steep hill before waiting for the others. Clapping, cheering, and chants of ‘Cold Shower!’ and ‘Let’s Go!’ echoed through the streets as a young woman grimaced, pushing herself up the hill.
Once everyone had ascended the hill, the group took off again. In a nearby backyard, a rooster crowed, as the sun rose over the horizon.
An older woman waiting at a neighborhood bus stop saw the group approaching and started calling “Good morning!” offering fist bumps and high fives. The runners returned her enthusiasm with cries of “Let’s go!” and “Eat your breakfast!” Passing another housing area, several residents stood on the balconies of their apartments, waving and cheering.
At the next stop, at the intersection of West Main and 10th Street, Hawkins yelled, “Let’s work! Let’s remember why we’re here!” as the runners gathered on the sidewalk and bike lane while morning traffic passed by.
Once the entire group had assembled again, the runners took off, heading down 10th Street before turning into another neighborhood and ascending a second steep hill before the final group stop. ‘Cold shower!’ members yelled to those pushing up the hill, as one young woman sprinted her last steps and fist-bumped Jones and Dowell at the hill’s peak.
The last half-mile of the route returned to the start, with several runners sprinting down West Main. Runners clapped as the last group members ran into the parking lot. Hawkins offered more fist bumps and cheers.
“I am a runner now, because it’s all I want to do when it comes to fitness,” Hawkins said. “I want to be comfortable with being uncomfortable. Running is still not my comfort zone, but when I run, I’m releasing everything. I run until I’m empty.”
As the group stood in a postrun circle, Hawkins addressed them once more, pausing before he spoke about his aunt. “I know I come out here and yell sometimes, but I’m really an introvert,” Hawkins said. “I’m an only child—and you all are my family. You have gotten me through this time.”
Later that day, Hawkins posted on Instagram, “this was by far the toughest run I’ve ever had, but my prolyfyck run crew got me through. Really appreciate the blessings.”
He returned Monday morning for his next run.