On Sept. 21, the Boca community can make its city safer and cleaner by picking up trash along a 3.1-mile route of their choosing during the inaugural RunTheCity Virtual 5K.
What began as a New Year’s Resolution to exercise more for Boca Raton City Councilman Andy Thomson has turned into a mission to clean up Boca. It all started in 2019, when Thomson resolved to exercise more for the new year and was surprised by how much trash he saw littered along the route he ran from his home to his gym. That day, he left the gym with a trash bag to clean up as much as he could.
“I filled up the bag but I didn’t get all the trash,” says Thomson, “I didn’t have enough space.”
From then on, Thomson took a bag with him on every run he went, picking up trash around his area, but soon felt like he could be doing more.
“I came up with the idea of, rather than just doing my own neighborhood and my own route to the gym constantly, why don’t we do the entire city?”
In 2021, Thomson set out to run all 475 miles of city streets in Boca, cleaning up along the way and identifying ways to improve city safety. It wasn’t long before local organizations like the Boca Raton Historical Society, Junior League of Boca Raton, and more heard about his efforts and wanted to learn how they could participate.
In the years since, Thomson has helped organize 25 events with hundreds of volunteers who have picked up more than 1,600 pounds of trash and identified almost 500 safety improvements across 600 miles of city streets, exceeding the 475-mile goal and now a quarter of the way through another loop of Boca. Thomson himself
“The goal is not only to make the city cleaner, but to make the city safer,” says Thomson.
Whereas each RunTheCity event has focused on one specific area or neighborhood, the upcoming 5K will be the first organized citywide initiative.
“We’re not raising money, we’re not doing anything like that, it’s completely free,” says Thomson. “All we want to do is raise the level of cleanliness in our city by having a whole bunch of 5K routes get cleaned.”
Thomson is the first to admit that he never imagined picking up trash on his morning runs would eventually become a mission shared by others in the city, but believes that the level of enthusiasm and engagement to be indicative of Boca’s community spirit.
“Did I think that it would have this kind of resonance with folks? No,” says Thomson. “But it goes to show, people in Boca Raton, they care about their community. it’s a beautiful and clean place to begin with, but it’s still something that you can improve even a little bit.”
To register for the Virtual 5K, click here. The first 100 registrants will receive a free race T-shirt, and all registrants can pick up gloves and biodegradable trash bags on Sept. 19 and 20 from Runner’s Edge (3195 N. Federal Highway, Boca Raton). Once you’ve collected the trash from your 5K, bring it to Runner’s Edge where it will be weighed.
