Why running clubs are booming

Nearly every founder we spoke to described the same starting point: a small group, a fixed time and a promise that nobody gets dropped.

What changed in the last few years is scale. Sessions that once drew fifteen people now draw three hundred, and clubs have had to invent pace groups, route marshals and post-run logistics on the fly.

The common thread is not fitness. It is that a weekly run is one of the few remaining ways to meet people in a city without paying for it.