By Kimberly Wilson ·Updated February 13, 2026 /> Getting your Trinity Audio player ready…

There’s a particular kind of frustration (i.e. hell) that comes from spending your hard earned money on “high performance” fitness apparel only to realize it was never designed with your body in mind. 

Sidney Baptista, founder and CEO of PYNRS, knows this intimately. As a runner himself, he spent years navigating an industry that seemed to have a very specific idea of what a runner’s body should look like, and his didn’t fit the mold. “It became clear through my own experience as a runner, buying gear that was ‘high performance’ but just didn’t fit my body properly,” he recalls. 

The problem was pervasive. “I kept seeing the same issue across my community: great brands, but designs that weren’t built with our bodies in mind.”

When Baptista dug into the research, what he found confirmed what he already suspected. Ninety percent of performance running apparel brands build product for the same body type, which means the vast majority of an entire industry, is designing only for a singular standard. “That made me realize the industry wasn’t really designing for us, we were just trying to fit into what already existed,” he says. The implications go deeper than ill-fitting shorts (though, it really is that deep). Instead it’s about who the industry sees as the default runner, and who’s expected to make do with whatever’s available?

That realization became the foundation for PYNRS (pronounced “pioneers”), the first Black-owned and founded running apparel brand. The name itself is deliberate, paying homage to the New York Pioneer Club, one of the first large-scale integrated sports clubs in the U.S., founded by Joseph Yancey and two other Black men, Robert Douglas and William Culbreath. But Baptista’s mission reaches beyond simply honoring the names we already know from track and field. He’s going after the deeper history that mainstream running culture doesn’t talk about.

“When people talk about Black legacy in running, the focus is usually on Track & Field athletes, and rightfully so. They should be celebrated for their contributions and accomplishments,” Baptista explains. “What often gets overlooked, though, is the legacy and contributions of Black leaders and athletes in long-distance running.” He points to Ted Corbitt, a founding father of long-distance running in the U.S. who laid the foundation for modern marathon racing in America. Born in South Carolina in 1919, the grandson of formerly enslaved people, Corbitt became not just a pioneering ultramarathoner but an architect of the sport’s infrastructure. He was the first president of New York Road Runners when it formed in 1958, created the route for what would become the modern New York City Marathon, and developed the precise course measurement standards using a calibrated bicycle wheel and mechanical counter thatsrc=”https://media.essence.com/vxcjywbwpa/uploads/2026/02/pynrs_outdoor-16-scaled.jpg” alt=”Running Culture Doesn’t Always Reflect The Communities That Built It—This Black-Owned Brand Is Changing That” width=”400″ height=”266″ />

That’s precisely why PYNRS created 26.TRUE, a marathon and half-marathon that both start and finish in Roxbury’s Malcolm X Park. “And so every April, when the world comes to Boston for the marathon, our mission is to amplify and celebrate the neighborhoods, cultures, and diversity that make up the full fabric of the city,” Baptista explains. “Our goal is to intentionally drive real economic dollars generated during marathon weekend into communities that are too often overlooked in the broader narrative of running in Boston – supporting local businesses, creators, and residents in the neighborhoods that shape the culture of the city.” For Baptista, runners from Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan need to feel just as central to Boston’s running identity. “We’re not trying to replace tradition; we’re expanding who gets to be included in it.”

That expansion extends to how PYNRS thinks about building community. “Running has always existed in our communities, it just hasn’t always been celebrated in mainstream spaces,” Baptista notes. Through experiences like ‘Spin The Block’ and ‘Chasing Majors,’ PYNRS creates moments where culture and running aren’t separate categories but part of the same experience. “The goal isn’t to just ‘bring’ running to our communities; but to also uplift what has always been there.”

The approach is grounded in a simple truth about representation: running feels accessible when you see people who look like you already doing it, not because someone tells you that you belong. “If we want to change the future of what running looks like, we have to start with the youth. When Black and Brown kids can wake up on a Saturday morning and look out their window or sit on their stoop and see people from their own community running through their neighborhood, we begin to normalize running as something that belongs to us, something we do,” Baptista says. “PYNRS exists so the next generation doesn’t have to search for themselves in the sport, they already see themselves in it.”

Looking ahead, Baptista sees PYNRS as proof that the industry’s long-standing divide between technical performance and cultural authenticity is a false one. For years, running brands have operated as if you had to choose: either the gear works at an elite level or it represents your community, but rarely both. PYNRS is building something different, a brand where high performance and cultural identity aren’t competing values but complementary ones.

What drives him now is the idea of Black and Brown runners experiencing gear that feels genuinely made for them, not just in how it fits their bodies but in the stories it tells and the identity it reflects. He wants people to see a running culture that actually mirrors the diversity of the world we live in. A culture where Black and Brown runners aren’t trying to find their place, they’re already home.

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