Racing Redefined: the man determined to make running exciting again
Luke Myers wants to make the amateur athletics scene just as exciting - and rewarding for the runners - as the run crew culture he has built for himself
The pervasiveness of American culture is so limitless that it’s no surprise that its reach extends into running.
Despite Kurt Cobain being dead for 30 years, you still see Nirvana t-shirts on the young and rebellious in all 195 countries. Mean Girls- and Friends-isms now punctuate the English language thousands of miles in every direction away from the USA. Baggy jeans from whichever walk of American life you like are back in fashion. Super-sizing running is next on the menu.
In a sleepy village outside of Nottingham, England, Luke Myers has taken inspiration from historic New York run crews like Orchard Street Runners and Bridge Runners. He saw the way they used adventure and semi-lawlessness to run the city streets (and beyond), and wanted that for the UK.
The result? Unsanctioned Athletics - an invigorating race platform that Luke is taking around the country, rewarding the athletes more, while also making the sport itself more of a spectacle. He’s making everything around athletics better for everyone involved.
But Luke still calls Nottingham home, and the foundations and inspiration of what he’s building now are firmly in that city.
Nottingham? What’s in Nottingham??
Luke moved to a suburb of the East Midlands city with his wife, Millie in 2020 after growing tired of living in Kettering - a beautiful little market town, with little going on. The problem with moving to Nottingham was they didn’t know anybody there. The good news was there were over five times as many people to make new friends with.
They “figured running was the best way.”
Both Luke and Milly started running in 2016 or so, and soon got really into the sport. Going from Parkruns to 10k races, and then onto marathons, they were “pushing each other further down the rabbit hole.” After getting a sub-20-minute 5k Parkrun, Luke joined an athletics club and started training more properly. When they moved to Nottingham they stuck to this route, joining an athletics club for the social aspect, but found there was nobody their age. Making friends through running was the priority, so they built their own.
Enter: Embankment Run Club.
“Through Instagram, we'd seen the crew scene grow and grow over the years, starting in London with Run Dem Crew, and then crews in Bristol and Manchester doing really well as well. It got to a point where we're just like, ‘That's really cool, but no one's doing it here. And If not us, then who?’”
They had seen so many people their age running along the River Trent during the pandemic that they were sure they could bring together. They came up with the name (which is their meeting point), set up the IG account, stuck a few stickers along the route, and let it rip.
A couple dozen people turned up to the first run in August 2021. Less than three years later and they’re consistently getting over 100 people running 5k or 10k on a Wednesday evening in Nottingham.
“It's made Nottingham our home, and we don't see ourselves leaving anytime soon. We’ve made some brilliant friends out of it, and we’ve realized just how many other people are in a similar situation to us, and how it's served them in a similar way, or for other reasons: mental health, getting fitter, or challenging themselves in their running.”
Luke talks about seeing a “growth of community and connection,” and speaks proudly of seeing club members going from “struggling around a 5K” to “completing marathons and ultras.” He talks about how inspiring and powerful it is to see people grow within the community he’s built.
Communities are not there to be exploited
“‘Run Club’ is such a buzzword at the moment.”
Despite, or maybe because Luke himself works in sales and marketing, he talks about how jarring the multiple discordant brand activations that occurred during London Marathon week were.
“What is Garnier doing with a run club? It just spoils the scene. You can see why they want to do it, but these communities are not just a way for brands to reach new consumers. We've never viewed ERC as a way to make money. We want to work with brands, but we want to work with the right brands - ones who are doing good stuff in the running scene.”
“It's a way of creating opportunities for people. We've been running for years. New runners who join us don't have that same experience of running that we've had, so if they can try a pair of shoes on for a run, and decide if they like them before they invest £150, we've done a good thing.”
Expecting brands to give away shoes or race entries in exchange for interacting with club members is the quid pro quo that Luke accepts, and it’s an ethos that he’s carried over into Unsanctioned Athletics.
Building a better world for amateur runners
Formed around vented frustrations around the lack of financial support for semi-pro or sub-elite runners in the UK, Luke decided to use the three years of connections he’s made through Embankment Run Club to improve the situation.
With a bold tagline of “racing, redefined,” Unsanctioned Athletics set out their stall.
“We don't feel the system in the UK supports, incentivizes, or encourages the people who are aspiring to become elites and professionals.”
Luke himself is a 2:39 marathoner and despite being “the least athletic teenager going” has won his fair share of races since then. He talks about winning a £25 voucher to a gas station. He talks about winning a £5 voucher for the next race. As you may be gathering, he was not impressed.
He talks about the difficulties of other, more serious athletes feeling even more dejected as they strive to reach the next level. He talks about the difficulties of finding the time to do the work to get sponsored by a brand. Athletes are doing this speculative work on the side of their jobs, their family lives, and 100-mile weeks, and being rewarded with little more than a handshake.
“Not every runner wants to be a content creator or knows how to build a brand. If you’re a speedy guy running 29 mins for a 10k but you've got 500 Instagram followers, brands aren't interested. And that's really shit.”
“We know these people want their running to do the talking, but the world we live in at the moment, it needs to be the running and something else that a brand can get behind. Unsanctioned is this idea around making the running scene more rewarding for people like that.”
This is a conundrum that I can relate to deeply. I trained as a magazine journalist, and have had enough successes over my career to continue believing in myself as a writer. The problem is the same for me: there’s pressure on me to do other stuff as well. I should make a podcast, my friends tell me, but I’m not a broadcast journalist and don’t really want to be. I should make more Reels on Instagram, my influencer friends tell me, but it’s the same issue. I want my words to do the talking, but there is that prevailing idea that long-form reading is just not as interesting as a 20-second skit. Apparently, it’s the same in athletics!
“The root of the problem is that running is quite boring to watch. Brands are getting behind it on a crew level because it's really easy to reach loads of consumers, but there’s not a huge return on investment in professional circles because people aren’t watching 10,000m track races. Watching people running in circles is not exciting.”
The solution? CHAOS
Taking heavy inspiration from the unsanctioned street racing made famous by Orchard Street Runners and Bridge Runners of New York, as well as RACE09 in New Zealand, the idea was to provide a fresh and exciting way for British spectators to digest the sport of running.
Watching along from 5,000 miles away, the heavily-stylized imagery that comes out of Unsanctioned Athletics races give a frantic, cloudy air of claustrophobia. There is a tangible feeling of bewildered intrigue around the events. To me, it’s as exciting and tense as Luke has designed it to be.
The Battle Royale-esque aspect to UA races is that participants don’t know their destination until 30 minutes before the race begins. That very purposefully lends to a chaotic tension; an uneasy excitement. It adds to the electric atmosphere, and that spills over into the spectators at the hub who have no idea how long it’ll take for racers to return.
But what about those racers? They’re fast. The first Unsanctioned Athletics race was won by GB orienteer Flurry Grierson, and they’ve had national marathoners, as well as plenty of competitors from traditional running clubs like Highgate Harriers and Kent AC. Even if they served a purpose for him in terms of training, those are the kind of athletics clubs that Luke didn’t really feel like he fitted into socially.
Having built his new venture in his own image, at the cross-section of performance and entertainment, those clubs are now providing almost half of the competitors.
“We want those guys to be inspired and see the value in doing one of our races that they don't get from their local village 10k. It doesn't show up on your Power of 10 [British Athletics race rankings website], but they can get £500 of shoes, nutrition, and other tangible product that is useful to them.”
The ability to borrow from running culture around the world to improve the financial situation of athletes in his locale is a gift. The thus-far successful execution of the plan, however, is a masterstroke built on deep first-hand experience that is influencing his creativity.
We can continue to watch where Luke Myers will push British running to next, but you can bet it’ll be as exciting as it is rewarding.
Links & Further Reading
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- Raz
This took me back to an "underground" race series we put on in Tacoma, Washington a decade ago called Urbanfell. What a blast that was. There are so many interesting little corners of the running world... Thanks for exploring and sharing. These are the times.