Jorge Aguilar: Transformed by Running, and Now Repping the Bronx
Jorge Luis Aguilar moved to the Bronx from Costa Rica with his mother when he was 7 years old. His family lived below the poverty line—their congressional district was the poorest in the country—and Jorge attended a tough neighborhood school where every day his main priority was to not get beaten up or robbed.
“On the first day of third grade I was jumped because I didn’t speak English,” Jorge recalled in an Instagram post last year after he was featured in a Humans of New York interview that movingly narrated his story of immigration and subsequent mental health challenges.
"Two kids held my arms, while the third punched me in the stomach. I didn’t know how to say: ‘Why?’ So I kept saying: ‘But what? But what?’" He went from being a cheerful little boy to an underachieving junior high school student who rarely smiled.
A Catholic high school on the Upper West Side turned Jorge’s life around and he became the first member of his family to go to college. Medical school followed, at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx, and later a psychiatry residency at Montefiore Medical Center, also in his home borough and where he now is a practicing child psychiatrist.
Jorge joined the Boogie Down Bronx run club in 2018, during his residency. He was "down mentally” at the time, he said, and running lifted his sprits. Three years after running the 2019 New Balance Bronx 10 Mile with his club, Jorge is training for his first marathon at the TCS New York City Marathon.
“Running has transformed my body and mind," he said. "Thanks to running, I sleep better, eat better, feel better, and have more energy and resilience throughout my day. I feel these benefits every day, and they motivate me to continue on this journey and to hopefully inspire others to do the same."
He continued, “I think it’s normal to feel on the fence about [starting to run], but for me and everyone I know who was once on that fence, choosing to start a running journey has been one of the greatest decisions of our lives.”
Jorge ran this year’s New Balance Bronx 10 Mile on September 18 and crossed the finish line full of emotion. He anticipates the feelings will be even more intense on November 6.
“I may not be able to hold back the tears when we cross into the Bronx,” he said. “Bronxites take great pride in their borough, so to race through our neighborhood repping the BX on the chest of my jersey is going to be very special.”
He added, “I wanted my first marathon to be special and it doesn’t get more special than doing it at home, in the city that raised me, which just happens to host the greatest marathon in the world.”
Jorge’s family and friends will be cheering from the sidelines, including his 2-year-old son, Miguel. “[They] will be lined up throughout the route to cheer me on,” he said. “I can only imagine how that’s going to feel. So much of the training has been done in solitude, so to see everyone’s faces and hear their cheers on marathon day will undoubtedly be very emotional for me.”
Jorge is part of #TeamInspire at the 2022 TCS New York City Marathon, a diverse group of runners whose stories capture the power of running to change lives.
