Hermosa Beach Tuesday Running Club thanks departing founder Spencer Hill

by Matt Olin

Spencer Hill enlisted a few friends to start the Tuesday Run Club in 2021. Since then, TRC has grown to about two dozen runners, all motivated to support one another, and to start Tuesday mornings with a run through town. 

The runs start at Valley Park at 6 a.m. sharp so parents can get home in time to get their kids off to school. Most of the runners live or work in Hermosa.

We run south on Valley Drive to the Redondo border, and from there, follow The Strand north to 25th Street. We finish the 3.3 mile course with a final push up 25th Street to Vista School.

After Hill takes a group selfie, we walk back to the Valley Park, where everyone is parked. 

Last Tuesday, July 7, after the usual group photo, Hill asked us to pose with silly faces, and then to pretend we were asleep on our feet. 

He wanted the photos as remembrances of his last Tuesday Run Club run. He and his wife and two sons are moving back to their native Kansas to be closer to their families.

Hill grew up in Kansas and played football at Kansas State University. After moving to Los Angeles in 2003 he earned his SAG (Screen Actors Guild) card with roles in, among other shows, HBO’s “Six Feet Under,” “True Blood,” and CSI:NY.” Cosmopolitan named him one of America’s 50 most eligible bachelors in 2003.

Hill is the founder of Herald Hill, a casual men’s and women’s apparel company. He designed TRC running shirts and shorts for TRC runners participating in the Manhattan Beach 10K, and presents new runners with TRC hats and TRC pins. 

On the first Tuesday of each month, TRC runners meet after their run for coffee, hosted by fellow runner Fred Reyes at his Gitana Cafe on Hermosa Avenue.

I ran track and cross country at UCLA. Today, 30 years later, I trace some of my strongest friendships to those years. But after college I stopped running competitively, preferring to run alone. But I missed the camaraderie of a running group. In 2023, I heard about Hill’s special community of runners, of which I am now proud to be a part of.

We will miss our leader, but he has made certain TRC will continue on long after he leaves for Kansas. ER