Where are all the black joggers?

We are at a higher risk for high blood pressure, and we are 30 percent more likely to die from heart disease than our white counterparts, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. In a report issued July 16, the CDC said we (blacks) are 50 percent more likely than whites and 20 percent more likely than hispanics to be obese.

And despite our health problems, when we become adults we don't engage in one of the easiest, cheapest activities that is known to support heart health and trim waistlines: R-U-N-N-I-N-G.

Go to your local running trail and tell me how many black faces you see.

We gotta do better than this.

And I'm not saying running/walking is the end-all be-all. Some of us are into other recreational sports, and that's cool. But many of us do nothing. And sooner or later we will pay for the inactivity with shorter life spans or ill health. Since I am a runner, I want to start encouraging more blacks to run.

And so beginning today, I'm going to try to shine a little light on this issue. At the end of each post, I will note the number of black people I saw running.

When I ran Monday morning, the number was higher than usual (four). I saw a woman in her late 50s and a man in his 30s running. And I saw two men about my age walking. That's four people (five including myself) out of what had to have been more than 100 runners I saw when I ran from 7 to 8 a.m. Monday.

And even that was an improvement. Most of the time, I don't see any blacks when I run around Austin's Town Lake, even though we make up about 10 percent of the population. (I've seen three black women who are training for a road race through Rogue, which is one of the Austin-based runners clubs who train people to run marathons. When I ran in Fort Worth, I often bumped into one black woman (Vivian) and one black man (James) who ran the same trails as I did with Luke's Locker.)

Where are we at? We dominate the professional athletic endeavors, and I know you will find a lot of black men on the basketball courts or sandlot football fields.

But we don't run for recreation. We won't run. And when I say we, I don't mean the Kenyans and Africans who dominate the sport of running. I mean the American born black guy or girl.

I have not seen any studies about the number of American-born blacks who run, or participate in road races from 5ks to the marathon. Anecdotally, you'd have to be blind to know that for many of us, running just isn't our thing. I know the names and states of at least two dozen people who read or post things on my blog. Only two of the people I know, the bloggers who run, are black: Dawn from Connecticut and Reese from Oklahoma. I have also run into a few runners who belong to the National Black Marathoners Association.

I'm happy to report that my 60-year-old mom spends a lot of time on the treadmill. (And has even figured out how to text me while power-walking!)

I hope my white/hispanic/asian runner friends don't take offense to this post. It's people like you who got me into this running thing to begin with. And I am grateful.

But one day, it'd be nice to have to use more than one or two hands to count the number of black people I see out for their morning jog.

LAPTOP UPDATE: When Noah poured his cup of water on my computer Sunday, I just knew it would be toast. But after letting it drip dry, I turned it on last night and it fired up just fine.