Words by Moya Lothian-McLean. Photography by Mitch Zachary.

As a little girl, Gaby Alcala ran like the wind. 

“We ran from my parents’ house to the beach,” she recalls, of her early years spent among the tropical foliage of Oaxaca, Mexico. 

“We’d pass through all this dry terrain that looks like trails, past mango and coconut trees, until you get to the beach. It was so beautiful. Now that I’m older, when I go back I do the same run and enjoy it more. I cry with gratitude every time”. 

The 45 year-old does a lot more running these days – hundreds of miles of trails across America. She’s an ultramarathoner, competing in events alongside a team of women and representing an organization she calls “the beat of her heart”: Rising Hearts, a grassroots organization led by Indigenous people that uses running to platform their causes. But as recently as three years ago, Gaby didn’t think of herself as a ‘runner’.

“The way I was raised, at a certain age you had to be in your home, taking care of your kids,” she says. “Like there’s no more time to have dreams of your own.”  

But when she was 19, Gaby gave birth to her daughter. As she juggled demands as a single parent, she decided to seek a better way of life. She migrated across the border to the US, settling on Los Angeles as her new home.  

“I came to the States with a six-month-old baby,” she says. “Not knowing anyone, not knowing the language or the culture. It was hard.” 

Amid the optimism of the late 1990s, Gaby began to forge a life in Boyle Heights, an LA neighborhood populated predominantly by Hispanic and Latinx people. She juggled learning English at a local language school with parenting and working as a street vendor, pushing her food cart with one hand and her daughter’s stroller with the other. Eventually, Gaby found work as a travel agent, setting up her own agency, while studying for a high school diploma that would be recognized in the US. 

Life was good – she was happy, and her business blossomed. She met someone she wanted to build a life with and had three more children. But then came 9/11 and the terrorist attacks that shocked the world. No one wanted to travel and she lost everything. Slowly, she had to rebuild her working life. 

Education had always been a safe space for Gaby, and after studying Early Childhood Development, she started a degree in advanced muscular therapy, setting up shop as a massage therapist on completion of the course. But as her new business started to grow, her marriage was faltering. Gaby was looking for an outlet. She began to run again. 

“When I was in the middle of conflict around my marriage, I started running,” she explains.

“At the beginning, I wanted to lose weight, but it became a meditation for me. I started finding the meaning in how beautiful it was to hear my feet touching the ground, the energy from Mother Earth was like healing music for my body.” 

At first, Gaby ran for three or four miles at a time as life carried on around her. Her four children were growing up; she’d signed her divorce papers, her business thrived, and she was starting to forge independent links with Indigenous people on Tongva land - what is now called California. 

Throughout it all, she kept running, entering 5K races, then her first LA marathon in 2017. The latter was a huge milestone - according to the Aztec calendar, 20 years marks a key date of personal evolution. Gaby had been in the country for 20 years and wanted to dedicate the race to “education, growth, community and the opportunity I had to be on this land.” She spoke to elders from the Tongva community who blessed her and gave her a significant item to run with: an eagle feather. 

“It’s recognition that the person is supporting and running for their community,” she says, of the feather. “It was an honor – it connects the purpose behind the running and what it stands for.” 

For Gaby, it opened up a world and pulled into focus why she runs. She realized her running was going to be the medium by which she would continue her work of representing her Indigenous culture and the issues central to Indigenous people across the Americas. Running, she says, connects her back to the land, the nature and the ancestors that have gone before. 

When she was contacted by a local running coach in LA, she felt everything swim further into focus. Working with her coach, she began to follow traditional training programs and learned “discipline,” she says. Personal records in her races followed, as did ultra-marathons, something she never thought she could do. And then Rising Hearts got in touch, asking Gaby if she wanted to be one of their 30-plus Running With Purpose advocates. Suddenly it all clicked. 

“Rising Hearts is the beat of my heart when I’m running,” Gaby says. “It represents the whole meaning of running for me.” 

Gaby’s first run representing Rising Hearts was a ‘prayer run’, a type of run that has become prominent among Indigenous advocates. Prayer runs honor the sacred relationship and history Indigenous communities have with the land they’re running on; participants carry prayers for others, rather than trying to beat personal records or push themselves. 

“It’s not like ‘I’m gonna run fast and I’m a fast runner,’” Gaby explains. “Every breath you take while running is giving meaning to those that are not breathing anymore. We were carrying prayers from families and all the [causes] Rising Hearts represents – missing Indigenous women, Every Child Matters (a campaign remembering Indigenous children forcibly separated from their families), getting the land back. There are a lot of responsibilities and prayers people ask us to carry for them.”

This way of running is more than a privilege, Gaby says. It’s a meaningful, conscious lifestyle. 

“It is giving a heart, face and recognition to those who have gone before me and to those who come after me,” she says. “We know that they have suffered. But we’re giving light and power to [them]. Running is connecting and communicating with other nations that we are still here. We are reclaiming our land, traditions and ways of living with Mother Earth. We are running with purpose.”

Combining her training with Rising Hearts has made Gaby feel like her path forward is clear: to keep running and representing Indigenous communities. “I represent Rising Hearts, my family and my lineage – people all the way from the North to the South,” she says. “Everything comes together. My heart is full of gratitude.” 

Rising Hearts is a grassroots organization committed to elevating the voices of Indigenous people and raising funds for their causes. Right To Run has partnered with Rising Hearts since 2022, helping shine a light on the organization and their events, providing financial support to the program and product donations to Indigenous peoples across the US. 

If you’re in the Los Angeles area and want to get involved, we’re hosting two events with Gaby and the Rising Hearts team in Venice on August 10th and 11th. Discover more.

Find out more about Rising Hearts and Right To Run.