Shortly after the inaugural Run Travis Run 5K began in the parking lot of the Kia Forum in Inglewood, my mission became clear: I couldn’t let Travis Barker pass me. I’d already conceded that he’d beat me, that much was clear. One look at his galloping gait in his Forrest Gump-inspired running club launch video showed that he was in much better shape than I was, a year removed from my 11th marathon and (literally) plagued by a lingering injury. Still, having him beat me by a full lap on the three-lap course was not an option, for no other reason than my ego.
For Barker, the race wasn’t a petty competition—certainly not with me or anyone else. “I run every day before a show, but not this hard,” he told me after the race, which he finished in 22 minutes. (I finished in 28 minutes, in case you were wondering, and no, he didn’t end up passing me.) “My goal is to come here and relax, have an easy race, but of course I didn’t.”
It’s a cloudy Saturday morning in Los Angeles, and he’s hosted the inaugural Run Travis Run at the Forum, right across the street from SoFi Stadium where his band Blink-182 will play to a sold-out crowd of 70,000 later that night as part of their current One More Time tour. The event, a 5K run and wellness expo spread across the grounds, welcomed just over 800 runners and built a sense of community, bringing together seasoned runners, Blink fans, and a combination of the two to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club of LA and New York.
Last weekend’s event was the first of two 5Ks scheduled for the morning of a Blink show, with a second scheduled in Queens, New York, on July 21. On Saturday, Barker arrived 10 minutes after the race’s start time with his wife Kourtney Kardashian Barker, who ran the course alongside two companions as a cameraman in a golf cart drove alongside them, capturing footage for Hulu’s “Kardashians.”
“We met and became friends and bonded because we were working out together, way before we were together as a couple,” Travis says of Kourtney. “So that was the only thing we had in common. We were really into wellness and working out. So we probably walk three or four miles a day right now, and then I jog because she doesn’t run yet so she walks. But she’s a good runner. My wife is a beast when it comes to working out, she sticks to it.”
Musicians organizing running clubs is nothing new (Diplo launched his own a few months ago, promising post-race DJ sets), but Barker, who has leveraged his fame to get fans into the sport, had a tangible impact at the Forum. Some were clearly competitive runners (Irvine’s Tim Reed finished in first place, just under 16 minutes), while others were clearly trying their hand at running for the first time. A sea of Blink-182 T-shirts dotted the crowd as runners and walkers circled the grounds. One man ran in Birkenstocks with no socks; a woman finished the course dressed as the nurse from the cover of Blink-182’s “Enema of the State” album; two people ran in full fur suits; and another man had a life-size inflatable alien strapped to his back.
For Barker, running is a way of life. It’s as ingrained in his schedule as eating or sleeping, and it requires him to stay sober. He struggled with an addiction to painkillers for years, until he survived a plane crash in 2008, and wellness quickly became a priority for him. “Running came into my life to help me get sober years ago, and I found out I was having my son around the same time, and I started running, boxing, being more health conscious,” he says. “And then I got hooked. And every time I wanted to quit smoking, it always countered the cigarette. It was always the thing I did to stop doing bad things.”
Added to that is a certain level of aerobics required to maintain the stamina needed for shows. At SoFi Stadium later that night, Barker alternated between a stationary platform and a floating podium while blasting his drum kit for 90 minutes, taking a moment at the beginning of each song to tuck his drumsticks behind his head, elbows in the air, before attacking his instrument.
“Even though I’ve been playing drums since I was four years old, if I want to be great on stage and not have to think about anything, or if something comes to mind that I want to do live, I can do it if I’m fit,” he says. “So I’m always there so I don’t have to go.”
Participants in the inaugural Run Travis Run gathered in the finish area, fueling up with bananas and soaking in the ice baths. Barker is looking ahead to his goals for the rest of the year (he ran a half marathon on New Year’s Eve and wants to do one by the end of the year) in hopes of creating a space where runners can share his love of running, one race at a time.
“I figure I run two miles every day anyway, so I might as well get everyone out there and run with me and raise money for charity,” he says. “I wish I could do it every day. I wish I could do three more miles every day of the tour.”
