On the eve of one year since Jorge Aguilar, a Cuban lawyer, founded with other colleagues the Facebook Group “a lawyer, a runner”, we talked to him about how this project has managed to add followers that they find, in his page, a way to motivate themselves and understand sport as a discipline that will help them in all the aspects of life. Working on socialization, motivation and spirit of the personal improvement are some of the axes of this group.
Jorge is looking to the future with the dream of being able to organize, through the group, popular races to enhance and develop the social link and transmit this great passion to all the runners who are lawyers. Likewise, visiting and getting to know the country through the participation in popular races and the universalization of the Group that will allow them to run in different latitudes, are his next objectives.
Which balance do you make of the Facebook group after one year of existence?
The balance is positive and encouraging, we have managed to incorporate members who have return to do to physical activity to lose weight and balance body and mind. We have reached to meet colleagues and friends who live outside the island and practice running and add other members who have become fans of it.
We have convoked our own races by creating a national team with members and employees of the National Organization of Collective Law Firms (ONBC) to take part twice in Marabana and we have brought together people who do not practice our profession.
We were in Marabana 2018 (moment in which I was conceiving and projecting the group) and especially in the 2019 edition, where the disposition and support of the Board of Directors of the ONBC and all the provincial governments of the country, was decisive for this national team, as they gave us all the necessary logistics to move the runners who traveled to Havana to take part, helping us to afford the travel expenses.
Which activities do you carry out outside of social networks?
Apart from taking part with the team “A layer, a runner” in Marabana, we developed a 10K race from the Sports City to the National Board ONBC, (close to the famous Tropicana Cabaret). The last race was held in July, 15km to thank the medical personnel who are facing Covid-19. When we have the chance to visit other regions to take part in certain races, we combine tourism with visits to local law firms, where we exchange opinions with our colleagues and promote thus the practice of running.
Sport is independent of professions, but not of effort, discipline and capacity of suffering. How do you work on the spirit of personal improvement from the group?
From training and daily personal meeting, as well as communication through other channels. The spirit of the group is not to be united, is to be articulated so that we all gain in mentality, strength and speed to overcome the distance and be able to cross the finish line. First we will dominate the distance and then to improve the times, trying to reach a standard average for age and distance. We know our pace in race and we support each other, we are able to stimulate whoever can go ahead and not wait for the others, we are able to go in search of another one when we finish our race and another one is yet to arrive (in the last Marabana a participant in the half marathon finished his distance and went in search of a member of the group who was running 42 for the first time, to encourage him until the finish line)
Popular races represent a great motivation for popular runners. In this sense, what does Marabana represent for your community?
Marabana largest sports project in Cuba, there is no other event in the country that manages to bring together different sectors of the population with the same objective. It has managed to articulate a race group in the country based on the great Marabana race. It allows student centers to take part as a team, for the family to participate as a team, for us to get to know each other and make the race a friendship. It has motivated the creation of groups that through new ways of communication promote the practice of the popular race. Behind Marabana there is a great effort made with few resources, but that achieves a race that crosses the city and becomes a tourist route for any of its participants.
Marabana needs to overcome its status as a project, as a race, to become a national distinction. Marabana distinguishes us and we must distinguish it.
