Teen runner has no intention of stopping

IT TOOK a bet to get Roy Bowser Jr., 16, to enter the Broad Street Run in June.

But he finished it, won the $40 and now he's moving on to this weekend's 8K run that accompanies the Philadelphia Marathon.

Bowser is one of about 250 kids in Students Run Philly Style, a nonprofit organization that encourages Philadelphia students to create and meet goals by having them run in races.

The kids - some of whom are running in tomorrow's marathon, others in shorter races - have been training for nine months, said Heather McDanel, the director of Students Run Philly Style.

Mostly composed of kids from North and West Philly, the program offers a safe after-school alternative in neighborhoods where crime may prevent them from going outside.

Bowser joined Run Philly Style in February. At the time, Bowser's teacher, Jess Naugle, at the Walter B. Saul High School of Agricultural Sciences in Roxborough, wanted him to join the cross-country team.

"Cross-country was probably one of the farthest things from my mind," Bowser said. Naugle bet Bowser $40 that he couldn't finish the 10-mile Broad Street Run, and a with little push from his friends Darryl and Dwayne, Roy accepted the challenge.

Under Naugle, Bowser met with a smaller group of 13 kids three times a week to train for the marathon.

At first, "it was really hard," said Bowser, an 11th-grader. "The first week she had me walk the trails to see where I was going."

After that, Naugle wanted Bowser to walk the trails for a whole month, but Bowser wanted to stay on the same training regimen as his friends.

Dayna Gibbs-Bowser, Bowser's mother, said she likes that he is out and active, even if she doesn't understand any of it.

"The whole thing is foreign to me," Gibbs-Bowser said.

But it gives Bowser one more thing to talk about with his father, Roy Bowser Sr., who also is a runner.

"He gives him racing advice," she said. "They've always been close, but this just gives them one more thing to connect on.

Being surrounded by friends helped motivate Bowser. Often, if Bowser or one of his friends lagged behind, the others would wait until the slower runner caught up before moving on.

And although one or two kids were overly focused on the goal, Bowser said his group was very relaxed and able to joke around while practicing.

"When you're serious, it makes someone nervous," Bowser said about practicing.

The idea of waiting for friends came back in the Broad Street Run. But at that point, Bowser wasn't running to beat Naugle's bet, or any of the other kids. He was running for himself.

"It was a really hot race," Bow-ser said of the weather. "I was getting tired, but the one thing that kept me focused was that I was never able to see everything on Broad Street before. I never saw the Naval Yard, so that was really neat to run past."

With about a quarter-mile left before the finish, Bowser said he could see the time. He had about a minute left to beat his record.

And then, something incredible happened. He was in last place, and all of the other kids and running leaders who had already finished the race came back to run the last quarter-mile with him.

"Some kids I never really saw before came back and ran with me," Bowser said. He finished the race, beating his previous record by seconds.

Bowser's next goal was to run in the half marathon, but school and SAT prep courses prevented him from training regularly. He didn't complete in the qualifier for the marathon, and is instead running in the Rothman Institute 8K tomorrow.

So even though he isn't in the marathon, Bowser believes that he learned a valuable experience from Run Philly Style.

"I'll stick with it," he said about the group.

"If you're serious about running, you can do anything." *