Boston Marathon

Since launching about five years ago, Stride for Stride — now made up of more than 400 runners from 26 countries — has secured bibs for more than 600 races.

Running may be one of the most affordable sports, at least when it comes to equipment. All a person really needs is a solid pair of sneakers, after all.

Racing, on the other hand, can be quite costly. For many longer road races, runners can expect to front a couple hundred dollars for a bib or commit to raising $1,500 or more for a charity to gain entry.

This year’s entry fees for qualifying runners of the Boston Marathon and New York City Marathon were $230-235 and $255-315, respectively.

Tom O’Keefe — perhaps, better known by his social media handle @BostonTweet — didn’t necessarily plan to become a runner. But once he had a taste for road races, he didn’t look back.

In 2014, about six years after launching BostonTweet — a social media account he started in 2008 to bring attention to local businesses during the recession — O’Keefe received a free bib for the Falmouth Road Race from New Balance, the race’s title sponsor at the time.

“Falmouth, if you’ve ever been down for the road race, is an incredible race,” he told Boston.com in a recent Zoom interview. “It’s seven miles. It’s hot as hell — it’s actually brutal, but you have thousands of spectators and you just feel like a rock star.”

O’Keefe added that he “definitely got the bug after that and really got obsessed with running.”

A hurdle with road races

His next big race was the Boston Marathon in 2015. As he started to look into more road races though, O’Keefe soon noticed a couple of issues.

“One, it was getting really expensive for me to run the races I wanted to run — and there are certainly races I couldn’t run because of that,” he said. “And two, a lot of the people at the races looked like me. There were a lot of white guys and white girls, but there wasn’t much diversity.”

In his running clubs, including Heartbreakers, at the time, this was not the case, he said. Many of his friends in these clubs were Latino immigrants, but he soon realized that they had never run any races.

It took a few years, but in 2018, the idea for a nonprofit that could address these two issues finally came together. During a road trip to California with his wife, Bridget, they came up with the idea for what would become Stride for Stride, a nonprofit running organization that purchases race bibs for immigrant, Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income runners.

Through Stride for Stride, O’Keefe set out with “the goal of increasing diversity and the accessibility of races.”

Stride for Stride’s first runner was Estuardo Calel of Guatemala, who O’Keefe knew from Heartbreakers.

“Once he joined the team, I realized, ‘OK, we have something here. There’s a person that wants or needs this,’” O’Keefe said.

From there, Calel introduced several more runners to the team, and Stride for Stride soon took off.

That first year, the team had about 10 runners. Now, in 2024, Stride for Stride has more than 400 from 26 different countries. Since launching, the nonprofit has secured $175,275 worth of bibs for more than 600 races. Together, the team has run a collective 26,280 miles.

Most of Stride for Stride’s funding comes from charity bibs through the Boston Marathon, New York City Marathon, Falmouth Road Race, and other races. Most recently, Stride for Stride secured a $12,000 grant from the Boston Athletic Association.

“It’s been an incredible experience — far beyond what I expected,” O’Keefe said.

More than a running group

For the Brookline resident, everything goes back to the Falmouth Road Race.

“Looking back, I might not have ever started running if it wasn’t for that free bib,” O’Keefe said.

“I’ve realized what an incredible race that was and how lucky I was to have been given that opportunity to run that race,” he said, adding that he tries to give the team that same opportunity every year.

Most of Stride for Stride’s runners are Latino immigrants and many of them had not been to Cape Cod, according to O’Keefe.

Every year, he gives the team the chance to get out of the city for the weekend, spend a couple nights at AutoCamp Cape Cod, and then, together, they run the race that Sunday.

Falmouth has a lottery to select runners, so the number of team attendees changes every year, but Stride for Stride had 40 runners last summer, O’Keefe said.

Runners quickly become family through Stride for Stride, he added. As many of them are immigrants, they have found commonality and connected over similar struggles.

“It’s this incredible bonding,” O’Keefe said. “Everyone hugs each other, and it really is a tight-knit family.”

Most of the team’s runners are from Colombia, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, or Guatemala, so most of them speak predominantly Spanish. There are also a lot of runners from Brazil, who speak mostly Portuguese.

Though O’Keefe describes his own ability to speak Spanish as “muy mal,” he still feels as connected as ever with the team.

“Dairon and Carlos,” he said, for example, “speak very little English, but they’re kind of the ones I have the strongest connection with, and obviously, running together is a bond, but a lot of it is kind of gesturing.”

A couple of years ago, Calel, Stride for Stride’s first runner, even asked O’Keefe and his wife to be godparents to his twins.

“It’s definitely this incredible family that I never expected to happen,” the Stride for Stride founder said.

The team has spread mostly by word of mouth with teams growing in not only Boston, but New York and Miami, too.

Most of the team’s runners joined Stride for Stride via a recommendation from another member. Anyone can apply though via the Stride for Stride website.

From running mate to life-saving donor

O’Keefe didn’t create Stride for Stride for himself, but the experience, ultimately, connected him with the man who would save his life — Jorge Rosales.

In 2020, O’Keefe received a shocking diagnosis — chronic kidney disease. To this day, he does not know why or how he developed it, as he eats well, runs marathons, and does not have diabetes or other related health concerns.

For about two years, O’Keefe managed, trying not to let CKD slow him down. When his kidney function suddenly plummeted in 2022 though, his nephrologist said he would need to prepare for a kidney transplant.

Immediately, his cousin, Colleen, signed up and began the process to see if she was a match. Though she was a match in blood type and went through roughly eight months of extensive testing, she was eventually rejected as a donor.

When Stride for Stride members learned that O’Keefe would need to start again with finding a donor, they quickly stepped up.

“Four of my runners on my team signed up to donate to me, which is incredible and so that shows that the connection is far more than just runners that we see on a weekend,” O’Keefe said.

Among those who stepped up was Jorge Rosales, one of Stride for Stride’s earliest runners. After months of testing, O’Keefe received the call from Rosales that he was a match in early October.

Throughout this time, O’Keefe continued running. On Nov. 12, he ran the BAA Half Marathon alongside Rosales and 50 other Stride for Stride runners — his last race before the kidney transplant.

O’Keefe details the whole experience in a recently released book, “Kindness: How a Simple Act of Kindness Can Change Your Life.”

On Jan. 10, the kidney transplant successfully took place, and not long after, Rosales was already running races again, including a half marathon less than two months after the procedure — a fact that O’Keefe emphasizes to show that kidney donors can live active, full lives following donation.

In order for someone to become a donor, they must be in exceptional health, so that they can continue on living with one kidney, O’Keefe explained.

“Anyone with two healthy kidneys has the power to save a life through an act of kindness — it’s our superpower,” he wrote in his book. “It’s an amazing power to posses. More than 90,000 people in the United States are currently waiting for a kidney transplant. You have the power to lower that number. You have the power to become a superhero and save a life.”

As the one who received the donation, O’Keefe’s recovery will take a bit longer, as he is highly immunosuppressed, but he is easing back into running, as well, he said.

O’Keefe could not be more grateful to Rosales and the whole running group.

Stride for Stride “introduced me to my donor, which, you know, has just been an incredible life-saving gift for me,” O’Keefe said. “Jorge — he’s just an incredible human, an incredible, kind person. And you know, I wouldn’t have had that without Stride for Stride, so it’s been everything for me.”

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