Nina Hill doesn’t consider herself a runner, yet every Wednesday she helps lead hundreds of 20- and 30-somethings on a jog through downtown Calgary.
“This is just a fun way to get out and get offline,” said Hill, 26, a former figure skater and co-founder of the Offline Wellness Club.
Hill and her friends started the group in April, and it now draws nearly 300 people on balmy summer evenings. There’s a mix of ability levels, but she says many are new runners, using the club as a way to make friends while getting a workout.
Among them is Kenedi Klein, 25, who typically hits the gym for exercise, but was drawn to the club as a way to unwind after work.
“Cardio has actually not been my strong suit,” said Klein. “I don’t love it, but being around such a positive crowd has really made me change my ways, and I look forward to Wednesdays.”
The two women have plenty of company. While running as a hobby has been around for decades, it’s having a particular moment right now.
Growth driven by young adults
From coast to coast, people are signing up for races in big numbers. Both the Toronto Marathon and the BMO Vancouver Marathon say they’ve set records this year, and the recent Servus Calgary Marathon welcomed the most runners it’s had in a decade, with organizers saying they could’ve accepted more if they weren’t afraid of running out of T-shirts and medals.
Athletics Ontario, which sanctions road races across that province, says its registrations are up 16 per cent compared to this time last year.
“[It’s] absolutely awesome, considering it actually was on the downward spiral before the pandemic,” said Sheryl Preston, the organization’s associate manager of trail and road running.
Much of the growth is being driven by young adults in their 20s and 30s.
Both Athletics Ontario and the Running Room, which sponsors and organizes races across Canada, said this age group is their fastest-growing demographic, while Strava, the popular running app, told CBC News its largest share of new users now come from Gen Z.
On TikTok, the hashtag #running has 3.9 million posts, with many users riffing on the idea of completing a half marathon becoming a quarter-life milestone, akin to getting married or having children.
Ebbs and flows in popularity
The sport is so popular now, it’s hard to remember it wasn’t always this way.
Recreational jogging was introduced to North Americans in the early 1960s by Bill Bowerman, a University of Oregon track and field coach. He became an early advocate for the sport after discovering it during a trip to New Zealand, and subsequently wrote the book The Joggers Manual, introducing people on this side of the pond to the idea that running could be done by — and was beneficial to — everyday people.
“It was brand new,” said Lauren Goss, athletics archivist at the University of Oregon. “This idea that running … wasn’t just something that athletes did and that we observed or spectated, it was something that you could do yourself.”
By the ’70s, the sport had become popular enough that CBC profiled it as a trendy — though slightly bizarre — pastime.
It got another boost in the ’80s, when John Stanton founded the Running Room in Edmonton. The company introduced the sport to more people by offering learn-to-run courses, which have reportedly now garnered 600,000 participants.
“[The programs] opened up the field to a lot of different runners,” said Ed Wagner, an Edmonton-based area manager with the apparel chain.
Stores are having trouble keeping shoes in stock after running becomes a popular new sport in 1978.
Cheap, easy, accessible
The sport continued to grow through the early 2000s, Wagner said, before hitting a plateau in the early 2010s and then surging in the wake of the pandemic.
He believes many of today’s new runners took up the sport when gyms and pools closed, and have since decided to stick with it.
The experience of sitting at home during the pandemic also left people fed up with online life and hungry for community, said Preston, with Athletics Ontario, which primed them to seek out local groups.
Today’s running clubs are becoming increasingly diverse, she said, and it’s easier than ever for people to find one that suits their goals.
“The heart and soul of running is community,” said Preston.
“It’s not really about performance — it’s really about being out there with a bunch of people, like-minded people.”
Another point in running’s favour: Amid a high cost of living, it remains a relatively inexpensive and accessible form of exercise and socialization.
It’s certainly possible to drop a lot of money on a pricey pair of running shoes (and many people do — evidenced by Hoka’s recent earnings) but it’s also possible to pop out the door with any old pair of sneakers and a threadbare T-shirt.
“I feel like for a lot of people, it’s probably, like, an easy way to get into exercise,” said John Kokkoros, 28, a pace leader with the Offline Wellness Club.
“I think the consensus is, ‘Oh, it’s just running, like all I need is a pair of running shoes…. I don’t have to pay for a gym membership.'”
Not everyone is jazzed about the rise of run clubs: Some Toronto residents, for instance, say they’re taking over sidewalks without regard for pedestrians, though others say a few bad apples are giving the groups a bad name.
Given that many workout trends tend to come and go (take the aerobics craze of the ’80s), it’s unclear if today’s running boom will flourish or fizzle.
But Calgary’s Offline Wellness Club, at least, is confident in its future, and is making plans to keep running through its first Prairie winter.
“I think the future of [the club] is limitless,” said Hill, the club’s co-founder.
If you’re scrolling on TikTok or Instagram, you might have seen that run clubs are the new way to find a partner – but how easy is it? CBC News’s Ashley Fraser joined a 5K run to find out what runners think of the hype.