Marin running club celebrates 50 years
By Allison Kegley (reprinted from the Marin IJ)
Like most parents, Marin resident Kees Tuinzing sorts his life by the time before kids and the time after kids.
When asked when he founded Tamalpa Runners, he says, “Well, it was after my daughter was born.”
So Tuinzing really had two babies around the same time: his daughter and his new running club, the Tamalpa Runners.
The seeds of Tamalpa Runners started to sprout thanks to a group of dedicated runners and workout enthusiasts: Tuinzing, Lisa Spielman, Gordon Stewart, Alan Kreuzberger, Harry Hlavac and Jim McGowen. It was a bit of a hodgepodge group of people that somehow worked given their various backgrounds: an accountant and violinist, to name a few. These people all had a vision to ride the wave of the running sensation that was sweeping the nation.
It was the early ’70s when everyone started to see that running could be cool. The Olympics inspired many to put on running shoes after Frank Shorter had won the marathon in 1972. All of a sudden, people wanted to hit the pavement. Joan Ullyot was a pivotal running advocate, dismissing the idea that running long distances was detrimental for women. She wrote a book called “Women’s Running” in 1976, motivating many women to join the sport. In the words of Tuinzing, “Suddenly everyone wants to do a marathon even though they used to think it was stupid.”
Back then, it was pretty easy to put on some shoes and run out the door, but, according to Tuinzing, “shoes were a mess back in those days.” Despite the lack of arch support, people hit the pavement and started logging miles for the first time. With this new surge in running, there had to be a club for them all to gather, hence the Tamalpa Runners was born, named after Marin’s own Sleeping Lady.
Tuinzing started with track workouts at the College of Marin along with a Saturday morning run on Mount Tamalpais. Sprinkled in there were runs at Big Rock, China Camp State Park and Bear Valley, to name a few. There was a lot going on. As Tuinzing puts it in one of his journals: “1976 was a very busy one.” The club only grew and grew. 
The 1980s were “big time” for the club, peaking at 1,800 runners. It was the heyday of Tamalpa and would set the club up for success for years to come. An event that became the crown jewel of the club was the Marin Memorial Day race that started in 1976. It was a large race that had a lot of working parts and required help from many club members, with Tuinzing at the helm. However, a race of that size and popularity was something that Tuinzing admits about “killed” him. It was a race that had individual timers and handwritten logs, a process that has since been fast-tracked with the advent of the first timing system in 1985. But that’s the labor of love.
Running is a sport that people always question. “What are you running from?” It’s not running from anything, but running toward something: a goal, time or distance. It’s the feeling at the end of a tough race when you think, “Never again,” and then you find yourself registering for next year’s race that same night. Runners are a complicated species.
Thanks to the work of Tuinzing and other founding figures, Tamalpa has been a club for 50 years now. We have been at the top of the running boom and hit the depths of COVID, but we’re still standing — or running. Over the span of 50 years, not all of us are running. And after more than 83,000 miles, Tuinzing decided “enough of that.” But like any true athlete, you can’t just abandon your sport. And like many Tamalpans, he is now a coach and trainer and holds workouts on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. It’s good to see that you’re “slowing down,” Tuinzing! He also attends monthly happy hours, because Tamalpa has always mixed running and socializing.
Putting so much time into a club, raising kids and managing life has kept him busy. Having spent years organizing races and writing the infamous Tamalpa Gazette, Tuinzing says that he likes to spend his time now taking his wife out on dates.
Thank you, Tuinzing, for creating this wonderful club that has brought joy to so many runners. Cheers to 50 years and to whatever lies ahead.