For locals, Run Internacional is a way to reconnect with friends and family, celebrate the region, and counteract the narratives of violence and chaos that dominate U.S.-Mexico border discourse (El Paso actually has one of the country\u2019s lowest crime rates<\/a> among big cities). \u201cEl Paso is one of America\u2019s friendliest cities. We are a very loving city,\u201d Mayor Renard Johnson told me. \u201cWe don\u2019t see the border maybe like other communities see a border. We see a community in one region.\u201d<\/p>\n By guiding runners through the streets of the two cities, the race also allows out-of-towners to hear, smell, and feel what daily life looks like on the border.<\/p>\n Mario Porras, the El Paso Community Foundation\u2019s vice president of international affairs, spearheaded the first race, in 2015, when he was O\u2019Rourke\u2019s director of special projects. Though born in El Paso, he grew up in Ju\u00e1rez. This year\u2019s race was his first since he suffered a stroke less than three weeks after the 2024 event. It took the 44-year-old a little more than a year to fully regain his speech; he spent time in a wheelchair but can now walk with a cane. The experience made him reflect on the meaning of his life and deepened his commitment to the border region. Along with others at the foundation, he continues to help lead Run Internacional.<\/p>\n The 2025 race had extraordinary demand. While previous years had capped the event at two thousand runners, this year\u2019s would include three thousand. Runners\u2019 descriptions of the registration process made it sound like snagging Taylor Swift tickets. \u201cYou have to be on it with the tickets,\u201d Marguerite Mauritz, who works at the University of Texas at El Paso, told me. Her partner, Maggie Barnes, said they registered at 6 a.m. The first 2,500 slots opened on August 15 at midnight and sold out within sixteen hours. A second registration opportunity opened with 250 slots and sold out in three minutes, and a third, with the final 250 slots, sold out in two minutes.<\/p>\n Then the race, scheduled for November 15, 2025, was postponed due to the U.S. government shutdown. Putting on the international event requires cooperation between the two cities\u2019 consulates and border-security operations. Shortly after the shutdown ended, organizers announced January 17 as the rescheduled date. With some runners backing out, a new registration window opened. Those three hundred slots sold out within twenty minutes.<\/p>\n I was impressed by the cities\u2019 zeal for running. Folks belonged to running groups, like JRZ Running Team, the Antisocial Run Club, and Run for It. Some belonged to multiple groups, or even ones on both sides of the border. Ruth Sofia Ortiz, a member of JRZ Running Team, ran the race in a Rar\u00e1muri-style skirt. The Indigenous group is native to Chihuahua and is known for its members\u2019 ability to run long distances<\/a>. In fact, some had completed<\/a> a 540-kilometer run from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 2024.<\/p>\n \u201cI struggled with it, because it\u2019s heavy,\u201d Ortiz said of the red-and-green skirt. \u201cIt catches the wind.\u201d While she\u2019s not Rar\u00e1muri herself, she gained respect for the group from wearing their attire while running. Ver\u00f3nica Palma, one of the Rar\u00e1muri runners who completed the 540-kilometer run, said a 10K is shorter than she prefers, but she appreciates the significance of the race, which she ran wearing a purple-and-green Rar\u00e1muri skirt and a long-sleeved Run Internacional T-shirt. \u201cIt was important to me because it unites us.\u201d<\/p>\n I immediately noticed the diverse age range on race day. Some recalled running in the Carrera Internacional de la Amistad when it took place on both sides of the border from 1968 to 2001 (after 9\/11 heightened border security, that 10K became limited to Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez and has remained there since). Some couples pushed their children in strollers. Adrian and Lauren Zepeda brought their daughter and son. Despite not crossing the border regularly, Adrian, who grew up in El Paso, sees the two cities as closely linked. \u201cIf you look overhead from an airplane and you come in, it looks like one big city,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n The crowd took off at 8 a.m. We weaved our way through downtown El Paso, around Southwest University Park and past a group of colorfully dressed folkl\u00f3rico dance performers. I ran alongside Barnes, who\u2019s originally from the Midwest, and Mauritz, originally from England, who both moved to El Paso in 2018. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of rhetoric about dangerous immigrants and border invasion, and I don\u2019t feel like I see that here,\u201d said Barnes, who participated in group bike rides on both sides of the border when she first moved as a way to explore both cities. \u201cThe militarization is way overboard. Seeing the concertina wire along the Rio Grande is just really sad.\u201d<\/p>\n Shortly after parting ways with Barnes and Mauritz, I crossed the Stanton international bridge into Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez. The Ju\u00e1rez symphony orchestra greeted us with music. We rounded a corner, running along a highway parallel to the Rio Grande and past a line of classic cars. I spotted Sandoval. His outfit was hard to miss. \u201cI\u2019m dying over here,\u201d he said. The race was halfway over. Sandoval had wanted to do the run for years but had missed the registration window until this year. \u201cI hate this,\u201d he confessed. \u201cI\u2019m doing this for them.\u201d By \u201cthem,\u201d he meant his family living in Mexico.<\/p>\n As we kept moving, a fire truck with hanging U.S. and Mexico flags blared its siren. The Mexican side gave Sandoval renewed life. \u201cThis side is way more turnt up,\u201d he said excitedly. Sandoval takes pride in the uniqueness of border life, something that other Texans might not understand. \u201cA lot of people in Central, East Texas, they\u2019ll laugh and joke that El Paso is not part of Texas. I mean, they\u2019re kind of right,\u201d he said. \u201cWe\u2019re a whole different community out here. We\u2019re in a different time zone. We\u2019re right next door to the border. A lot of people come in and out for work. We go over there regularly to go visit family, and they don\u2019t have that. I don\u2019t fault them for not understanding, and I don\u2019t fault them for saying we\u2019re different, because we are.\u201d<\/p>\n As the race progressed, Ju\u00e1rez was waking up. It was a little before 9 a.m. We maneuvered through the picturesque Plaza de Armas and up to the Catedral de Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, where mimes performed. A lucha libre\u2013dressed runner noticed a restaurant opening its doors. He beckoned to the proprietor for a burrito, to no avail.<\/p>\n Police and border security on both sides reveled in the event\u2019s adrenaline. \u201cDale,\u201d they yelled as runners passed.<\/p>\n Nearing the finish, I took off toward the Paso del Norte bridge and sped up a steep, 635-foot uphill stretch that Hern\u00e1ndez had warned me about before the race. I huffed and puffed across the finish line, collecting my participation medal. Along with the 2,480 other runners who finished, I\u2019d run a 10K across two countries.<\/p>\n The significance was personal to Jesus Camarena and Annas Rios. They\u2019d driven eight hours from Fort Worth and showed up on race day wearing Nike hats, one black, one white. For Camarena, who was born in Guadalajara, Mexico, but has lived almost his entire life in the U.S., the race involved two important firsts. It was the first time he entered the U.S. with his newly obtained resident status. And it was the first time he\u2019d set foot in Mexico in 33 years. He ended up breaking his 10K personal record. He admitted to feeling some \u201cfirst-time jitters\u201d at the border. Growing up, he\u2019d been taught to be cautious around law enforcement. In the end, following the run, his experience was smooth. \u201cCrossing back with nothing to worry about felt amazing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n I took in the thousands amassed on the Mexican side of the bridge, waiting to reenter the U.S. Standing in the long line with my passport in hand, I realized that plenty of folks were wearing jeans and sweatshirts. They weren\u2019t race participants. They simply wanted to cross. A family of seven in front of me was surprised by the line, but mostly, they were excited. It was their first time visiting El Paso from their hometown of Ju\u00e1rez. This type of crowd at a border crossing might become a major news story and be portrayed as chaotic. But that wasn\u2019t what I was seeing. It was two cities, one community.<\/p>\n Read Next<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Among the three thousand runners at the seventh Run Internacional 10K, in El Paso and Ciudad Ju\u00e1rez, a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145669,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[1477,2113,138,140,139,1006,4396],"class_list":["post-145668","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-el-paso","tag-border","tag-border-immigration","tag-el-paso","tag-el-paso-headlines","tag-el-paso-news","tag-outdoors","tag-running"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145668","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145668"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145668\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145669"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145668"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145668"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145668"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Mario](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/run-internacional-el-paso-ciudad-juarez-mario-porras.jpg\")
Mario Porras, the organizer for Run Internacional and El Paso Community Foundation\u2019s vice president of international affairs, in March 2024.Courtesy of Run Internacional<\/p>\n![\"Run](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/run-internacional-el-paso-ciudad-juarez-bridge.jpg\")
Runners at the finish line on the Paso del Norte bridge.Benton Graham<\/p>\n