Meet Lebo, Team Sarah’s Alumni Member
Where Are They Now? An Alumni Follow-Up 2017 to 2025
“In June of 2017 a dozen women from Sarah’s Oasis for Women, a home for women in transition in St. Paul, mingled restlessly near the starting line of the Downtown Run Around. The kids one mile race was about to start, after which would be their big moment - their first 5K race as a Mile in My Shoes team. The horn blew for the start of the kid’s race and all of the women cheered them on. Then, one noticed that Lebo was missing - she had jumped into the kid’s race. “That’s just Lebo!” her teammate laughed. The youngest Member of the team, Lebo was known to be fun and playful, and always up for trying new things - even when they don’t go as planned. “I was too tired to run the 5K!”
Running, Lebo will admit, has always been “in her blood”. Her father was a semi-professional runner in South Africa who had taken her along to a race as a teenager. “Once the gun went off, he left me!” But it was not until a group of women came to Sarah’s, the transitional residence where she had landed after leaving her home alone, at age 22, to start a running group that she seriously considered running regularly.
“Waking up to be outside for a run at 6am, well, I would never have done that alone,” she says. “But it was so great for me - not just physically but mentally, even professionally. My experience taught me discipline and commitment - and that had such a long lasting impact on me.” Lebo ran for two seasons with Team Sarah’s, and then committed to an Alumni team who ran “together” through the Covid lockdowns of 2020. She would regularly pop up at Mile in My Shoes races even after there was no longer a MiMS team at Sarah’s. “When I am struggling with motivation, I remember how I ran in the freezing cold and snow and I remember that I am someone who does hard things.”
“Waking up to be outside for a run at 6am, well, I would never have done that alone,” she says. “But it was so great for me - not just physically but mentally, even professionally. My experience taught me discipline and commitment - and that had such a long lasting impact on me.” Lebo ran for two seasons with Team Sarah’s, and then committed to an Alumni team who ran “together” through the Covid lockdowns of 2020. She would regularly pop up at Mile in My Shoes races even after there was no longer a MiMS team at Sarah’s. “When I am struggling with motivation, I remember how I ran in the freezing cold and snow and I remember that I am someone who does hard things.”
“Waking up to be outside for a run at 6am, well, I would never have done that alone,” she says. “But it was so great for me - not just physically but mentally, even professionally. My experience taught me discipline and commitment - and that had such a long lasting impact on me.” Lebo ran for two seasons with Team Sarah’s, and then committed to an Alumni team who ran “together” through the Covid lockdowns of 2020. She would regularly pop up at Mile in My Shoes races even after there was no longer a MiMS team at Sarah’s. “When I am struggling with motivation, I remember how I ran in the freezing cold and snow and I remember that I am someone who does hard things.”
These experiences served her well when, a few years after joining Mile in My Shoes, she moved out of Sarah’s to begin a degree in Construction Management at Minnesota State University, Mankato. As the only woman of color in a white, male-dominated field Lebo had few role models and was up against challenges most of her peers did not face. She persisted, and graduated in 2023.
Since obtaining her degree, she’s been busy building power plants with Xcel, traveling the country (“every town has a turkey trot!”), and working on obtaining US Resident status - a years-long process that paid off last month when, after 11 years in the United States, she was granted a Green Card. Lebo will spend this winter returning to South Africa for the first time since leaving at age 22. “I haven’t seen my mother or any of my family in eleven years, I am so excited to see them,” she said. And is her dad still a runner? “Oh yeah,” Lebo says, “He’s talked me into running a race with him in November in Sowheto. He will leave me … but then he’ll turn around and come back for me.” As for returning home to Minnesota with new motivation to run: “I’m coming back for those kids next year, tell them I will smoke them!”