Intro: We all know and love Hannah Wohlenberg, the backbone of Renegade and the queen of everything that we do. To launch our website, we wanted to create a monument to our Hannah by people who *really* know her. Enter Rosie Cruz, On’s Bay Area tech rep and Hannah’s best friend. In this piece, Roise outlines a pivotal moment in her friendship with Hannah and what they are building together. Photographed by Sarah Cotton, another of Hannah’s close friends, this piece is a visual and aesthetic love note to our Hannah.
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I wanted to share a relic in my notes app that I have been struggling to share because I’m not sure I am able to give it the justice it deserves. But if you love someone, and you wrote a whole note about them, you should probably tell them (and the rest of the world) right?
There was a moment in time, that I can pinpoint, where there was a convergence in Hannah, that almost guaranteed a reshuffling of thought within myself, and therefore our relationship. I, a sophomore in college, and Hannah, a junior, lived in a yellow house in westchester together amongst our best friends and teammates. In a formative time in girlhood, Hannah and I looked to each other for a sense of protection, for a variety of reasons I don’t think we fully understood at the time. One of my life’s greatest blessings is that I got to grow up with Hannah, and we got to witness so many phases of renewal and reincarnation and stagnation, that I’m almost embarrassed by how acutely she knows who I am and how precisely I know all of her. Amongst many of those memories, I will always remember the way we would get ready together, and a lot of times, we straightened our hair. There was a specific day that I can remember that is so metaphorical and exemplary of our relationship and the way we hold each other and the journey we have been on together. That was the time she told me that she was “throwing out her straightener”.
It was a declaration to her curly hair (and to mine) that she was choosing to be unbound by the punishment of heat and burning. We gifted ourselves self devotion and self love when we collectively decided to resist the notion or buy into the idea that we were only lovable when our hair was straight. It sounds silly but that permeated a lot of things. When we chose ourselves, together, we learned that we were lovable and desired when we were not “race weight” or an equation or hitting PRs or qualifying for teams. We were sought after and seen and held when we had different perspectives, approaches, shifts, mentalities from others.
The growth and its subsequent celebration started when we chose ourselves and our vindication over the graveyard of trying to fit someone else’s mold. When despite the physical ailments and mental fog, we could look at each other and see a whole world that had not existed before and we could hope so intensely it would shake both of us. When we released the idea that we needed to fit neatly, smoothly, straightly into someone else's notion of what it meant to be runner, a teammate, an athlete, a writer, a woman, a Brown woman, when we threw out the straightener within us, that was when the path started.
We grew into this sport, even more entangled than we had previously been, because those around us were done with the straightener too. In fact, the sport came to us more naturally, more deeply, because nothing about running wants to be tamed. And I hope that even if you don’t know the whole story, I hope people see that in us and feel seen for it. It’s why we need more brown women on the start line, at the table, leading crews, starting crews, joining crews. and the center of celebrations. Our bodies have the intuition to discern (enter what you will) and we are adept enough to enact a vision that promises safety, protection, and collective effervescence.
What I feel in this sport is that there are special corners where we are doing this work, but oftentimes, most of this world doesn’t really understand the spiritual depths of running—and dare I say community—in a way that is fully committed to really seeing people. When I’m with Hannah, and with Renegade, I am reminded to release the bullshit, and drop into how we feel. When we feel and drop into our body, we realize it’s all right here within us. And then you realize that it’s in you and me and actually all around us. In the same way I look around at track practice, and you see smiles and waves, and that somehow makes me believe in myself. I look at Hannah and she makes me want to throw out my straightener too. Like fuck all that bullshit that ever made us feel little or devalued or whatever, I do believe. I trust in her and it makes me trust in myself. And god, that’s a feeling worth living for.
