For ten years, our club was awarded the ‘best water station’ by the Chicago Marathon Press and marathoners. In 1990, FR/FW Chicago began its long association with the Chicago Marathon by staffing a water station, an association that continues to the present day. In 1989, as more walkers joined the group, Frontwalkers was officially added to the club name. In July 1982, after the success of the first Gay and Lesbian Pride Run, Frontrunners Chicago was officially established as a club by Peg Grey, Rob Williams, and Jim White. And the fact that there are three different spellings of the name – FrontRunners, Front Runners and Frontrunners – is just a further example of the clubs’ diversity. Most have regular weekly runs/walks and many also get together at local restaurants after their runs. Some of the clubs elect officers, have bylaws and a membership dues structure, many don’t. Many include walkers, not just runners, and at least one club has many more walkers than runners.
Some of the clubs have hundreds of members, some startups only a few. There are currently about a hundred Frontrunner clubs around the world, and they are as diverse as where they are situated. International Front Runners took a major step in becoming a more formal body by drafting and adopting a Mission Statement and Constitution at the International Front Runner Forum in September 1999.
Inspired by Patricia Nell Warren’s novel The Front Runner, the first FrontRunner club began in San Francisco in 1974, and other FR clubs quickly began forming in the United States, then in Canada and abroad. International Front Runners is an affiliation of LGBT running/walking clubs that have organized in many of larger cities around the world.