Why we hate run clubs

Whole lot of hating in the article watch out.

The other day I was walking up Oxford St towards Bondi Junction. I love how there’s such a vibe shift once you pass Taylor Square and enter Paddington. It really does go from alcoholics and art students to mums that love The Project and rugby union fans the second you cross those lights. When I eventually did cross the invisible Darlinghurst/Paddington wall the first thing I noticed was a huge group of runners, maybe 40 of them, I quickly J-walked across traffic to avoid the stampede.

Once out of harm's way I stopped to look at the group, 40 happy people taking part in a positive and healthy activity after a long day of work, I was truly repulsed to my core. But why? Why do these Labrador-people bother me so much? You know, the type of people that love Hamish And Andy (I love them too dw),the types of people that use the term buddy unironically and love a cheeky bit of office banter ;) 

Why does them deciding to get together and join a club where the main activity is jogging send me into such a spiral? And what does that say about me?

What are run clubs and why are they such a thing?

Run clubs are nothing new, they’ve been around forever. Group exercise is as old as exercise itself, so it definitely isn’t the actual act of group running that bothers me so much, it bothers me a bit, but it’s not the main cause of my pain.

It’s the optics. 

It’s all about the optics.

This article would not exist if this was just about clubs for running. It’s the fact that every club has to have a ‘thing’, and that ‘thing’ has to really represent something.

There’s the, “we all suck at running” self deprecating type of groups, the “no haters allowed” ultra positive groups and even the, “wear X colour to signal your relationship status” speed dating type groups. It’s painfully forced. I HATE IT. All these groups come with a super sleek social media presence and like social media itself, these groups are always trying to give off a particular type of image. Even if that image is to look like they’re not trying to give off an image.

The hype is the problem.

We are living in the era of hype. With the way social media can turn things into household names within hours it’s not surprising at this point that something as bland as jogging has become the talk of the town since last summer. 

I think the first time I started seeing run clubs as we know them (a performative display of online self improvement that would later transform into a bizarre online dating alternative) was mid last year. There's these tiktokers from Melbourne, honestly I forget their names but I’m sure you know them if you’re on the app as much as me. One has a really long mullet, the other dark hair and freckles, really into AFL, gym and being positive, 100% Labrador energy. They post the usual health tiktok’s, it’s really nothing special to be honest. One of them got really into jogging and started posting heaps about how life changing it was - as I write this I’m realizing there’s no good reason I should know all this but this is where doom scrolling has left me, writing an article in my room in the middle of the night about the origins of the run club trend.

Somewhere along the timeline one of them decides to start a club and really push this run club idea to its absolute limits, there was plenty before him but for some reason corporate Australia fell in love with it this time.

Several popular run clubs with the kind of names that send me into a panic like “Wine Lovers And Chit Chats run club” or something cute like the  “not-a-run-club Run Club”,  that kind of thing. It really had that corporate PR, aperol spritz loving, pseudo-cool millennial feel about it. I like to call that aesthetic cheeky corporate. Cheeky corporate aesthetic is very milleneal, very unproblematic and very corporate. It’s the kind of vibe you get at a medium sized marketing company that puts a huge emphasis on being in the ‘know’ but somehow always being at least 6 months late to every meme trend their social media teams puts out. Basically It's corporate-aesthetic with a pinch of 30 year old white girl culture. The entire vibe of the current run club trend is cheeky corporate. 

What I find most interesting is the fact that usually trends like these are seen throughout the western world but for some reason this seems to be an Australian thing. (Seems to have reached the UK also).

I remember seeing a clip on the French side of tiktok, half my family is from France (sorry) and there is a never ending inner battle in me between laziness and trying to maintain my intermediate French language skills (sorry), so sometimes I switch the language on my phone settings to French and it makes my tiktok algorithm completely French (sorry). Anyways, this confuses the algorithm because my location is still in Sydney, so a lot of the videos are just French girls on a working holiday in Sydney doing a Get Ready With Me vlog or French dudes explaining the best type of farm work you can do while working in Australia. One of the videos was these 3 French girls attempting to have a night out in Sydney. The usual French complaining and smugness followed, “we can’t smoke anywhere”, “why are there so many ugly mullets”, “men here are so awkward” -  the usual where better than you mentality French people like to have when they travel to a country that didn’t even invite them there in the first place. One of the highlights of this video was them drunkenly exploring a ghost town Kings Cross at 4am when suddenly they are engulfed by a run club galloping down Macleay St, one of the girls is on the ground in hysterics at the fact Aussies are so into their health. The entire video encapsulated one of the main reasons why run clubs have had such success in Australia but not so much in Europe or America, and that’s Australian morning culture.

The bane of any party animal, night owl or just generally chill person's existence is Australian morning culture. If New York is the city that never sleeps then Sydney should be known as the city that gets a full 8 hours of rest and does a run, cold plunge and cafe outing all before 9am. Australian morning culture is alien to a lot of Europeans who are used to mid day siestas and starting a night of drinking at 11pm. Our love (Not mine) for mornings comes from our good weather and has birthed a world famous cafe culture, it’s also resulted in a below average nightlife.

The idea of a run club sounds like a match made in heaven for us, but there’s still something about it that just seems un-Australian? It seems more Californian than Australian and I think I know why, it’s the performative nature of the whole thing.

If we didn’t see people showing off that they are in a run club online, podcasts snippets on how run clubs are life changing and joggers becoming the new social media stars of our day we wouldn’t have an issue with it. It’s the fact that it’s so commercialized and in your face that it bothers so many of us. Telling the world how much your life is improving is un-Australian and hating on it is tall poppy syndrome at its best. 

It’s almost like it's a dark combination of the annoying elements of Australian culture (loving the morning) and the annoying parts of American culture (fake it till you make it and convince everyone around you that things are going really well) combined.

The never ending cycle of online validation to self hate to self improvement is symbolized through the run club trend. Not running, or even run clubs, but the run club trend itself. Although self help people can come off a little jarring I totally get the whole concept - it’s the idea of advertising your self help in an attempt to fill the void of self comparison that I hate. The, “maybe if I post this thing I will finally stop comparing myself to that person” mentality is something we are all victims of by using social media.

The run club trend will come and go, but these unfortunate elements of social media will not. There will be a new trend one day that will represent performative self help, and running will go back to being for boring office workers and former party animals that decided to go sober. Personally I would love to see kite-surfing be the new thing. Or rollerblading.