Lifting the heart of Bali’s run club culture with coffee and community
Jaryd Adair of Flowerboy in Indonesia sees the beauty in committing to helping every member of his community on and in the long run
This is Flowerboy
Flowerboy is a run club in Bali, Indonesia. Or is it a creative design studio? Or is it a… coffee shop? Surprise, reader, it’s all three.
As you can already tell, Flowerboy is not your traditional run club. When Canadian artist and skateboarder, Jaryd Adair added a coffee shop to a co-working space near Bali’s most boisterous beaches, his next, less-logical step was to start a run club.
“I’d just started playing around with running. Coming from a skateboarding and adventure cycling background, running was this new challenge where I could obtain the same feeling within a shorter amount of time. Breaking through your own barriers seemed like a fun thing to do.”
Two years of twice-weekly runs later and Flowerboy run club recently hosted over 200 runners at their 200th run. All because of Jaryd’s desire to challenge himself in a new way.
From eager beginnings
Jaryd’s journey into being a serious runner who leads a community run club is as unorthodox as the rest of this story.
“It started off a couple of years ago, on my 35th birthday. I had a friend who did 26km on his 26th birthday. I was like, ‘I can do hard things. Let's do 35km on my 35th birthday!’ I think I’d run 10km maybe two times before that. I didn't know about training my stomach for food or anything like that.”
Jaryd left his house at 3am to beat the heat, and took an energy gel an hour in, which “ended up coming out both ends.” He persevered and somehow ran another hour to his friend’s house, who was set to run the second half with him. However, Jaryd “looked like a ghost” at that point, and instead called his wife to pick him up and take him home to live to run another day.
The new plan was 36km on his 36th birthday, of course. With a year of run club running under his belt at that point, including a 12-week dedicated training program, he thought that the 36km would be the closest he’d ever get to running an actual marathon, so that became the plan.
“It was on a day of run club, so a couple of people really pushed me on. Mentally and physically, it was the most challenging thing that I've ever done.”
Jaryd has still never run a formally organized marathon, instead choosing 30km trail races up Bali’s volcanoes, and 50k races on another island.
“That was a really big feat for me, training properly and getting the nutrition dialed. For me, trail running is definitely where I want to be: experiencing nature in that way, and the pace and the energy of it overall is something that I connect with.”
A Canadian understanding Indonesia
The support that Jaryd received is one that he’s incredibly careful to pay back. For instance, Flowerboy pays their staff $1 for every kilometer they run as an encouragement to get out and run more, and gets those staff free footwear from the brands Flowerboy works with, like On and Adidas.
“The [staff] might not have the same opportunities as us in the Western World to have a nice pair of shoes and feel welcome in a run club. We want them to have that.”
Being a Westerner in southeast Asia – an outsider, even after eight years – is something that Jaryd keenly acknowledges, and uses that perspective to guide Flowerboy’s positive run club philosophy, partnering with the right people.
“A lot of expat-run things focus on the expat community. For me, making it inviting for locals to come and experience it is really important to me. I think hosting Satisfy’s LSD Runs has really helped because such a global brand coming to our little community in Indonesia is huge, and it brought a lot of locals.”
While Satisfy’s vision fits Flowerboy’s in how they both mesh art, music, and culture with running, Jaryd was keen to focus on the people at hand, so hired a local photographer, and social media captions are posted in both English and Indonesian. It’s a big effort to appreciate and fit into the local culture, but it may be more normal for the region than it seems.
Over in South Jakarta, the Strava Year in Sport report stated a staggering 78% of runners ran with a group in 2024. For context, Fortaleza, Brazil was second in that metric with 57%. It’s reasonable to infer that Indonesian run club culture is truly impressive. Jaryd confirms that other Balinese run clubs like Continuum and Rise & Run all join one another’s speed and threshold sessions throughout the week. It’s a small running community on the island, but an ever-expanding calendar.
The good, the bad, and the beautiful
The standard Flowerboy route is around the rice fields of Seseh, the neighborhood of Bali they run through. Jaryd mentions the rice fields enough times for em to ask what is so special about them.
“They all have a little track that gives access to all the farmers. Sometimes, that's paved and other times, it's a dirt single-track. I find, going through there, you're surrounded by nature and you get to see the local culture for what it is, and I think that our run club has become that treasure hunt for people traveling: that photo to say ‘I was in Bali.’”
“It’s iconic to run through at sunrise. The volcanoes are in the background, the rice fields are there, the temples. Where we're situated still feels very much like a village and a little bit more untouched, so you have less traffic and more of a Bali experience than some of the other areas.”
We love iconic runs, but when I ask Jaryd about the most difficult things about running in Bali, he has an equally instant, and equally thoughtful list for me.
Stray dogs
Traffic
Motorcycles
Being catcalled at 6am
The rainy season if you don’t like getting your feet wet
“There are no rules, so you have to just flow like a river and allow things to happen. If you're a very rigid person, it might be a bit daunting for you to figure out your place.”
I’d like to think that I wouldn’t mind the dogs, and that is indicative of not understanding how Balinese culture dictates that dogs aren’t ‘owned’ as such, and that 90% of those seemingly stray dogs do actually have a home, just not an owner. Rabies is obviously a problem with such loose ownership ideals.
Aside from that, Jaryd has a well thought out insight as to why there’s a perceived lack of structure in Indonesia, compared to life in our homes of Canada, America or England.
“In most languages there's a future tense, but in the Indonesian language – from what I know – there is no future. By default, that puts people in the moment, and I think that's really beautiful. There's so much creativity here, and there's so much happening, but it all just flows and it works.”
“If you look at traffic from a bird's eye view, for instance, and you're worried about time, you'd be like, ‘What is this?!’ But if you allow it to just flow, it can be a pretty nice place to be.”
That sounds like running to me. Get away from the feeling of trying to beat your race time for a moment, and just enjoy your body’s ability to run – right there in that moment. It’s a lesson in being present, perhaps.
How to build community and influence people
The way Flowerboy is run goes back to the idea of how Jaryd enjoys challenging himself and the joy of breaking one’s own barriers. He wants that for his community. He wants to share his positive experiences with as many people as possible.
Last June, on Global Running Day, for instance, Flowerboy hosted an event to help as many people get a 5km personal best as possible. The club provided pacers for every goal time from 20 minutes to 40 minutes.
“I ran in the back with a guy who was probably well over 200 pounds but he was really determined just to run the 5K, so I stayed with him. By the end of 3km, we were doing 100 meters on, 100 meters walking. When we showed back up [around the loop], the whole crew was there and made him feel like he was a superhero.”
“It brought tears of joy immediately for so many people. To see everyone championing an underdog, and knowing what it takes to achieve something like that was really beautiful.”
“It relates to skateboarding in that no matter where you're at in running, every other runner understands what it takes to get there, and it's encouraged and supported in a really beautiful way. That sense of community just betters everyone around us.”
In the running world, conversations about run clubs are always centered around community, but every group brings something different. Flowerboy builds camaraderie by creating accessibility and giving divine encouragement. And it’s all free.
When I write about Run Clubs as Third Spaces, this is exactly what I’m talking about. Many neutral grounds away from home or work (bars, gyms, cafes) have an ever-increasing cost attached to them, but the run club, organized as generously, consistently, and thoughtfully as Flowerboy’s — free and encouraging to all — is a priceless gem of a community endeavor.
And it’s beautiful.
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Thanks for reading
- Raz
Thanks for taking the time to put this together! Hope we can enjoy a run & coffee together one day!
Sooooo good!!!