Meet the Man Who Created a 200-mile Race to Reconnect With His Ancestors
This article originally appeared on Outside
At a young age, Phillip Kwa'han Espinoza witnessed the destructive forces of drugs, alcohol, and imprisonment, a fate he was determined to avoid for himself.
Espinoza transformed his life's trajectory by embracing running to sever the cycle of family trauma. Now, as an ultrarunner and race director, he is committed to shaping connections between the trail running and Native communities in Southern California. In this process, he founded Red Road Racing--an organization that seamlessly joins athleticism with cultural restoration.
The "Red Road" represents a symbolic path from Black Elk, an Oglala Lakota Medicine Man (1863-1950) that guides individuals toward living harmoniously with their community and the natural world. A few notable red road guardrails include connection with nature, respect for all life forms, balance, humility, gratitude, and a commitment to non-violence and peace. Conversely, the "Black Road" is a path of addiction, greed, insatiable desires, arrogance, dishonesty, and revenge.
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A Trail of Rediscovery
Espinoza, 35, was raised on the Mesa Grande Indian Reservation, a pocket of the country where poverty, drug abuse, and alcoholism are common. Early on, Espinoza knew he wanted a different path. Espinoza focused on a sobriety journey after having family members incarcerated and watching cousins die in their 30s from liver cirrhosis. Living the generational trauma of his tribal community, he consciously broke the harmful cycle of those before him.
As a member of the Cahuilla tribe, he is part of a community with a rich history that covers a vast area in Riverside and San Diego counties, including the San Jacinto and Santa Rosa Mountains.
Espinoza, who lives in Anza, about an hour southeast of Riverside, later discovered an ancestral connection with running through his great uncle Alfonso Soto's escape from a boarding school in the early 1900s.
"I wasn't always a runner," Espinoza says. "I have a story about my great uncle Alfonso Soto, who was forcibly taken to a boarding school in Riverside. It was about 90 miles away from his home, and he ran away from that school--he ran back home."
"And that story was circulated in my family for a long time," he adds. "When thinking about it, 'Do I have any runners in my family?' I couldn't really find any in the current generation. So, I look back a little bit further. And that's when I remembered my great uncle, Alfonso Soto's story about him running away, and I recreated that run in 2013."
Motivated by his family history, Espinoza committed a year to training in preparation to recreate his uncle's journey back home.
Espinoza embarked on a three-day spirit run, tracing his great uncle's path from the historic Sherman Indian School in Riverside to the serene landscapes of Mesa Grande. It was an homage to his family's struggles and a guide towards a future where running would keep him on a healing path.
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Creating the San Diego 200
For years, Espinoza had been mulling the idea of running a 200-mile loop around San Diego, the Kumeyaay Indigenous land. He wanted the route to showcase the natural beauty of San Diego, from the stunning coastline to the peaks of Cuyamaca.
"I created this route entirely from memory with no watch or GPS assistance," Espinoza says. "This event showcases what special beauty we have here and provides a life-changing experience for the select few brave enough to accept the challenge."
In November 2020, Espinoza completed the run around San Diego, finishing in 61.5 hours. Beyond the physical feat, this run held a profound cultural significance.
"That was the first time anybody's done a 200-miler around San Diego," Kwa'han Espinoza says. "I know 200-mile races are kind of popular these days. But my thing has always been that Indigenous people have a long history of long-distance running. My purpose with running became a personal mission to revive it as part of our culture in Southern California."
After the experience, he opened it up to a limited number of individuals who could participate in the San Diego 200--from Escondido to Torrey Pines, Torrey Pines to downtown Chula Vista. From there, runners trek east to Alpine and Descanso before ascending the peaks of Cuyamaca. The route continues to the historic town of Julian, looping through San Isabel and Mesa Grande until returning to the start point.
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Indigenous Diversity and Bridging Communities
Kwa'han Espinoza’s running journey is deeply rooted in his desire to reconnect Native communities with running and diversify the sport.
"There are these efforts to highlight and include more Indigenous runners," Kwa'han Espinoza explains. "There are talks about, 'Well, how do you diversify ultrarunning?' It's a really long conversation to be had, not something where you can just allow some Native runners to get in (to big events like the Western States)."
It's a long-term process, exposing the sport to younger Indigenous generations.
"Showing these communities on a regular basis, like having these events be traditional gatherings and having tribal families involved in it," he says. "That kind of exposure will get them interested in running, and they'll start running at a younger age, and then you'll have the Native American Courtney Dauwalters."
One focus of his mission is to connect ultrarunning and tribal communities. He believes that both spaces can benefit from each other in different ways.
"It's an opportunity to bridge the two to benefit from each other," he emphasizes. "The tribal communities benefit by having exposure to these races that they had no idea existed, and the ultra-running community benefits by learning about these tribal communities that are in the area immediately around where they live."
Kwa'han Espinoza hopes to create lasting connections through events like Cahuilla Rez Ultra in October. Participants get the unique opportunity to run on the Cahuilla Indian Reservation, and race entry benefits the tribe's youth and family programming.
"I have this vision that (Native) youth see these things, and they're out there at the race or watching these people run," he says. "It becomes part of the culture like it once was."
He envisions a future where tribal communities embrace running as a regular part of the culture. "Now, if I go to these tribes and tell them I do 100-mile races, 50-mile races, they're like, 'Well, I've never heard of such a thing.' I want it to become normalized, part of our culture again, because that's what we used to do. We used to run and deliver messages from the ocean to the desert. But now--like many parts of our culture--it's dying."
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