With Les 42, Malek Boukerchi Is Taking 26 Young People to the New York City Marathon

Collective dreamers still exist. A dream may be personal, but it can also be shared. Malek Boukerchi, an anthropologist by training, philosophical storyteller, author and inspirational speaker, chose the path of sharing several years ago. After taking around twenty young people to run the Athens Marathon in 2023, he is doing it again this year with the New York City Marathon. We meet the president of Les 42, an extreme ultramarathoner who dreams of a united society.

As someone who has travelled many roads, what path has Les 42 taken?

Life is all about the roads we take, and those roads are all about encounters, choices and circumstances. We cannot control the latter, but the power in our lives comes from the people we meet and the choices we make. The association’s story is no different. It began with a twist of circumstance: everything started during Covid, which brought my life as an ultramarathoner to a standstill. No more races. I can’t imagine life without physical activity. We need to move; the body demands it. I had to find something that fitted alongside my other professional activities. When the borders opened again, I went to Morocco as an anthropologist and speaker at the end of 2021. Some young children came to see me at a race I was sponsoring, and they gave me the idea when they said: “why don’t you start a club? You know so much, we could train with you…” I’m not Moroccan, but Franco-Algerian-Kabyle-Alsatian, and I’m proud of my multiple identities. I don’t have a state coaching qualification, but I do have practical, hands-on experience. Those Moroccan youngsters planted a seed… I returned to France at the end of 2021 and started training for a marathon again, simply for pleasure. What interests me now is no longer performance, but helping people grow. How do we move from being solitary to being supportive? From I to we. That idea fascinates me, and I believe in it. Les 42 grew out of it. The dream is to get 42 young people aged 18 to 28 who are facing difficult circumstances to complete a marathon. We’re not there yet, but we’re growing. We held the first edition at the Athens Marathon.

A symbolic first edition…

Yes, with the Athens Marathon, and it was perfect that way. We travelled as a group of 30, including 18 young people and 12 chaperones. As an anthropologist, I really enjoyed telling the story behind the race and the Battle of Marathon. After that Alpha, I went looking for the Omega. New York, the Mecca of marathons. Travel is also part of our project. Dreaming about Athens or New York gives them energy, especially those who have never really travelled. The first time you tell these young people they’re going to run a marathon, they don’t believe you. But we work hard, have fun and see it through. I say “we” because the association has taken shape since that first edition in Athens in 2023. I started alone, but then sought out other marathoners. We now have a whole team around the young people. As the philosopher and theologian Teresa of Ávila said: “It is not a matter of thinking a lot, but of loving a lot.” All the love they have not received from the French social system, we are here to give them. For them, it represents an extraordinary adventure.

The marathon is a wonderful school of life. It’s the best diploma there is.

How do you choose the young people?

Les 42 supports young people who have been let down by the education system. We take equal numbers of girls and boys. I’ve set up partnerships with local youth employment services across France to identify young people who have dropped out of education. The association is open to young people from cities and rural areas alike: I bring together France’s diverse communities and its rural heartlands. I tell these young people, “Come and run a marathon,” even though some of them are not sporty at all! Everything I teach as an anthropologist, I put into practice through the association. The aim is to convince these young people that we will work and succeed together. We are also fighting sedentary lifestyles, an unfortunate consequence of screen time. People are connected, but not connected to one another. Through our initiative, we try to offer something different. They will also learn to appreciate their bodies and understand that they can do great things with them, whatever their body type. After that, the only goal is to finish. We don’t care about the time. Finishing means succeeding. It is important for them to understand that if they commit to the process, they set a whole series of positive changes in motion. All the planning and preparation this project requires, including commitment, discipline and perseverance, will serve them later in life. When a business owner sees this kind of profile, they have confidence in them. The marathon is a wonderful school of life. It’s the best diploma there is. They will be able to call themselves marathoners: it’s a title they keep for life.

What happens to them after the marathon?

That’s the second part of the project. We commit to seeing them through the marathon, but we also help them find work. This social and professional aspect of the project is extremely important. It involves mentors who act as patrons of the association. We receive no public funding. We reach out to business leaders who are facing recruitment challenges. Many of them support us and fund the association, the trips and the training camps. More than that, they have started running with the young people too, creating even stronger connections. Decathlon also helps us with equipment, and I’m very grateful to them. The business leaders who signed up to the Les 42 project have helped us change things. At first, I thought I would run the programme only in Paris, where I live. They told me: “Okay, we’ll support the project, but only if you look for young people in our areas too. Otherwise it won’t work in the long term.” That idea rightly changed Les 42’s geographical scope. We visit the companies that support us with the young people. And the best part is that many of these business leaders now train with the young people and will join us! At the New York City Marathon this year, we’ll have around 50 race entries. About ten are reserved for executives who will run the marathon alongside the young people, creating an intergenerational bond, because like the young people, many of our mentors are also first-time marathoners. All together!

Optimistic about what comes next?

Of the 18 young people I took to Athens, nine still come running with us. They have become ambassadors for the project themselves. Some have even remained marathoners. Most importantly, they are all now socially integrated. That success gives us the strength to keep going and never give up. France’s network of associations is extraordinary, but it is a struggle. I have an ambition for the coming years: to include unemployed people over 55 in our groups, because life is difficult for them at the moment. Their self-esteem has also been damaged, even though they have skills and expertise. It’s heartbreaking. We all need to feel useful to others. Once again, one of the association’s aims is to build social connections, grow together and do things together… I would like to thank the young people. We give them a lot, but they give us so much in return. In the end, they are the ones who transform us most. I see it in the chaperones, the mentors. With Les 42, we break down the logic of social bubbles. In contemporary society, every community lives in its own closed loop, and it is killing us socially. The marathon breaks all that down, bringing us into something infinitely universal. We are all the same on the starting line.

Thank you to Malek Boukerchi for giving us some of his precious time, just a few weeks before heading to New York. If you would like to get involved with Les 42 and lend a hand, click here. You can also find the companies serving as Mentors for the 2025 edition on this page.