Building your village with run club

Florence Papougnot found her tribe twice over in London, first with Your Friendly Runners and then with Hot Boys Athletics. Flo will be joining the Run Club Culture panel in London next month.

What do you do when you move to a big city? How do you find your place? How do you find your people? Run club, perhaps.

That’s what Florence Papougnot ended up doing when she moved to Hackney, East London a decade ago. Starting out with solo daily 5Ks around Victoria Park to build a personal routine in her new home, she soon found a friend in a runner doing the same loop of the park on the same schedule. That was Oliver Hooson, a co-founder of Your Friendly Runners - one of London’s premier run crews.