Manifesto

RunAway

Something has changed in running.

Registrations for the big races sell out in minutes. Costs rise every year. Race numbers get resold. Races are designed to be increasingly exclusive, desirable, out of reach — and then everyone acts surprised when that's exactly what they've become. Running is turning into a market. And like all markets, it rewards those who know how to make noise.

We're not against big races.

Some are extraordinary experiences, and they deserve to be. But there's a difference between a race that is great because of the story that defines it, and a race that has decided to turn that experience into a business. We're living through a new running boom, and while some races sell out in minutes like major concerts, others quietly disappear for lack of volunteers. Nobody writes about them. Nobody looks for them — not because they're not worth it, but because they don't know where to look. RunAway wants to put a magnifying glass on the full variety of this landscape: the big races and the small ones, the invisible ones with a strong character.

There's something else that has changed, and maybe it runs deeper.

We run more and more alone. With earphones, eyes on data, with an app telling us whether we slept enough to deserve today's session. We look with admiration — almost nostalgia — at the Rarámuri in Mexico running barefoot, at training groups in Kenya and Ethiopia where running is collective by definition, and at Japanese ekiden relay teams where nobody runs for themselves: you run for the person who comes after you. There, running isn't an individual performance. It's a way of being together. We believe that way isn't lost. Just forgotten.

That's why RunAway organises experiences in small groups.

The race is the centrepiece, not the product. What we want to build around it is a complete experience: the place, the people you share it with, the way you arrive at the start line and the way you remember that moment ten years from now. Small groups, because running in a group works. You get to know each other. You train together, share the journey, and come home with something that goes beyond the race number or the medal hanging on the wall.

If you think the best running isn't always the most famous, and that running with others is even better than running alone, you're in the right place.