A new running organization has been hitting the streets all over the country. It's called Black Girls Run! and is dedicated to getting African-American women in shape.
"Black Girls Run! came about, my best friend Toni and I were sitting around talking about health and fitness," said founder Ashley Hicks. "We both got really fit and loss some weight, people started asking us, 'What were we doing.'
People seemed surprised when we said we were running and they began asking a lot of advice. "So we said, 'We should really start blogging about this, we could give advice and it's culturally relevant plus tell our friends and family what we're doing.'"
Black Girls Run! has grown tremendously in the past year. Hicks thinks that a large part of that success is because of the network presence on Facebook and Twitter.
"Facebook has allowed us to have people share the groups with their friends, point them in the right direction in different cities and via Twitter, it just kind of went viral," she said.
Click on the video above to hear about the personal experiences shared by those participating in the health effort.
