Meet the man who invented Run Club
21 years ago, NYC Bridge Runners became the first run crew on the planet, and its inspirational founder Mike Saes has been the figurehead we need from the very start
Run clubs. Boy, oh boy, are they in the news these days. Blocking traffic, alternative speed dating, filling bars and ruining them for the non-running patrons. They’re hot topics, and exponentially increasing numbers of people are trying to join or create a run club. Some say too many.
In a time when more people are working remotely, however, and more of those third spaces I like to talk about – parks, bars, places of worship, libraries – are either disappearing from our neighborhoods or are too expensive to frequent too often, run clubs offer a place outside of home and work to socialize and build community. Run clubs have become more and more important.
Last week, at The Running Event in Austin, Texas, I had the distinct honor of sitting down with the man who invented run clubs: Mike Saes, founder of NYC Bridge Runners.
For me, the terminology is fairly fluid, but ‘crew’ is the widely accepted term for a social running club, and 21 years later, Bridge Runners is still a shining example of how to be social. Meeting at 7.30pm every Wednesday in New York, they clamber, climb, and crawl their way through a new route through the city, stopping for a beverage, snack, or a photo opp whenever the chance arises.
Saes talks about it feeling like a duty, but not in a bad way. 53 years old, and as svelte and spritely as you’d expect a seasoned runner to be, he remembers the personal responsibility required in meeting up in the old days – before cell phones or beepers – and how if you say you’re going to be somewhere, you show up. It sounds easy, right? We know better. When asked about his legacy, it’s all about being that kind of example.
“Bridge Runners’ legacy is that we did it for the right reasons. We didn't do it to be cool. We were already cool.”
“Our mindset is we're going to make the world a better place above everything else. We have this mobile meditation, where we can just run for five miles. It's healing for us to run, and all I'm doing is providing roots and culture to make that healing pleasurable.”
“I think running before us was boring. It was running to get it over with or around the park, and now it’s about exploration and adventure, seeing and learning, because when you’re looking at things and not looking at the time on the treadmill or your watch, you just ran eight miles without even thinking about it.”
From his standpoint, he’s kept his practice sustainable by only running on Wednesdays. He understands that running five days a week would’ve led to burnout, and easy excuses. He understands that having trusted captains to take the helm when he’s out of town is important in maintaining consistency for the schedule. He understands the ecosystem in which Bridge Runners lives and breathes, and he thinks that when it comes to new run crews, the more the merrier.
“The movement is about more crews. Wherever there's a void, fill it with love and leadership. Make sure that you're training the next captain to do the same. Especially more female captains and leaders. I don't mean just female crews – I mean female captains.”
“Someone from NBRO said ‘I'm too old, I'm too slow.’ I said ‘Start your own crew.’ One of the girls from Run Dem Crew was like, ‘They're on the east side. I'm on the west side.’ I'm like, ‘Start your own crew.’ Immediately. We've trained you to become a leader. That's the whole point.”
“If you've been coming to Bridge Runners for six months, I expect you to be able to start your own crew. It doesn't have to be a carbon copy of Bridge Runners, it could just fill the void because there's a lot of voids, and leadership is needed. Not everybody has to run six miles on a Wednesday like we do. You can do a 5K. You can do a run-walk group. Do whatever to get people active.”
Growing up in New York City, the first community Saes was a part of was the graffiti scene. He grew up risking his lives with his friends by traveling to Coney Island Yard and writing on as many trains as they could without getting caught. The only escape was to run.
“I was running because of cops, beef, and graffiti. As a street kid, you're on the train tracks, the cops come? You gotta run through the train tracks in the dark. I was running out of necessity, not out of meditation or joy or to be in shape. I was running out of survival.”
The first bridge that Saes ran was on the way to pick up his son from nursery. He was running late, but that wasn’t the start of his running journey, of course. So what’s so special about bridges?
“I fell in love with bridges on day one. It’s about what you can see on the bridge, and the people watching. There's no hill in Central Park as tall as the Williamsburg Bridge.”
Then he started exploring. Every time he saw a bridge, he started wondering what’s on the other side. He wasn’t a fan of the 59th Street Bridge so he ran to the Triborough Bridge. If he saw a taco spot, smelled a bakery or saw some graffiti or a record store, he would run to it. It was an exercise in exploration of the city he loved that he was able to manifest via the art of running, and he “thought it was necessary to share that with others.”
Bridge Runners was born from a desire to find what’s new, but built on a need to share it. Saes jokes that NYCBR is now old enough to get IDed buying its own margaritas, so it’s interesting to look at how the crew’s goals have changed through infancy and adolescence into adulthood.
“It’s definitely moved beyond going for a run to get a cool t-shirt that I can only get if I go to that run.” Mike Saes, NYC Bridge Runners
“We started out with cool t-shirts, then the giveback — the non-profit — and now we’ve become a global community that is tackling the biggest problems in the world: loneliness, depression, helping obesity. All of those things, we tackle with ease, and [with Bridge The Gap] we’ve become almost like a travel agency where we meet up around the world.”
While on a local level it’s Wednesday evenings in New York with Bridge Runners, there’s a second gloriously global aspect with Bridge The Gap. Beginning with a call-to-arms around the 2012 Berlin Marathon, it was Saes and Charlie Dark of London’s Run Dem Crew who caused crews from Copenhagen, Paris, Berlin, New York, and London to converge upon one city. What a party. What a perfect sharing of knowledge.
At their best, run crews are a beautifully creative network of like-minded individuals. That initial idea of exploration and adventure courses through the members’ veins. And what’s healthier than running outside with your friends, Saes asks.
At this moment, it’s me, a Londoner living in Los Angeles, and Saes, a New Yorker, sitting in Austin, Texas talking about hid effect on the state of running. Soon after, he added run crew leaders from Boston, Milwaukee, and Washington DC to the pot. That’s the essence of bridging the gap. It’s exploration. It’s inspiration by doing, sharing, and simply being together. It’s one hell of an adventure.
“Bridge The Gap is so much more important and relevant than Bridge Runners. Bridge Runners is just cool kids running bridges. Bridge The Gap is this global community of amazing people. The people that I've hung out with on this trip? Friends for life. Nobody in BTG is an acquaintance.”
While Bridge Runners were the first crew on the block, Saes chuckles wryly when we talk about him being an OG and an inspiration to other crews. In the same way that Saes encourages more crews to fill the voids and needs in society, he talks about not being able to claim single ownership over an idea.
“We keep raising the bar. What Berlin Braves did at Bridge The Gap Berlin made me raise the bar for BTG NYC. It’s similar to b-boys or graffiti battles where you’re not trying to damage your competition, you’re trying to impress them, and by that everybody improves.”
There’s a distinct and inspiring lack of ego here. Relating developing the idea of run crews to new graffiti tags or a new breakdancing move is an apt analogy. Once you do something cool, you inspire your peers, and you simply become part of the zeitgest.
“I say BTG is bigger than grunge. People still wear plaid but crew culture is here to stay forever and ever.”
On that note, the current boom in running crews has seen double digit increases every year since the pandemic. With an influx of fresh blood, it’s easy for an old head to be scornful of the new kids on the block, but there’s none of that from Saes. He already lived the ‘Run, Party, Repeat’ run crew lifestyle, and understands that there are “newer, younger, cooler leaders in their 20s” now.
As for the future, Saes is planning his own races in New York. He laughs that he “doesn’t lace up for less than 10k these days,” so it makes sense that he’s been running ultramarathons for over a decade. But we’re not talking about your Javelinas or your Western States. These are 100-mile food tour celebrations of New York City with a rotating cast of running family members who are tracking you via GPS so they can join the run for a few miles or bring supplies. That’s the Mike Saes way. That’s the world that he’s cultivated, and he wants more people to experience it. UTMB it is not.
“Because running is trending so big, we need to create our own ultras. It’s something I've been working on for a long time but now it's perfect because races in NYC are all sold out. It's time for us to do our ultras at our own pace. I call them paraces – half parade, half race.”
Saes also talks about hosting Bridge The Gap weekends on their own schedule. BTG events have traditionally been anchored around a bigger marathon, but he talks about wanting to partner with cities and their tourist boards to promote healthy outdoor lifestyles using existing urban infrastructure.
“I don't want to run down Fifth Avenue and stop traffic for a day in New York. I'd rather run the Belt Parkway under The Verrazzano, and not have to shut down the city.”
He wants to show people what they have on their doorsteps. He wants to help people explore their cities in the same way that he’s explored his and his friends’ cities. That’s immeasurably cool. That’s bridging the gap.
Whether it’s with Bridge Runners or Bridge The Gap, people and the community you can create and then share with them is the center of everything that Mike Saes does. He leads by example. He tries things out before sharing them. He cycles each Wednesday night route beforehand to check it’s ok for his crew. He runs 100 miles around New York before opening the course up to more runners.
“I think it's really important to inspire people while you're running by them. Not for them to see your marathon time, or your medal, but just running down a street. People shout that they're gonna join you one day, and eventually that day comes.”
“I've always felt more rewarded by having others run their first marathon and do something they thought they couldn't do.”
We talk about running being a true leveler. Saes lights up about how running transcends gender and race. He explains how “from day one it was about the women being equal,” and the evidence is there to be seen. Wednesday night photos show a vivid cross-section of society.
Saes explains how run crew leaders are more accessible than any other leader, mentor, or athlete. That sentiment of equality runs right the way through crew culture.
“I don't know what your day job is, and I don't really care what your day job is. That's not really what it's about. It's about did you finish strong? Did you hit that hill? Did you hit those stairs like I yelled for you to hit them. That's all I care about. Did you sweat? Did you go all out? Did you have a good time? Did you get lost? Did you enjoy getting lost with us?”
There’s also the idea that marathons are the only sport where an everyday runner can run the same course as the best in the world, but Saes talks about how the cheer zone is what really vitalizes his spirit. He talks about standing on mile 21 of the New York Marathon until it gets dark, waiting for the walkers, because “those are the people that really need us.”
“It’s important that we cheer all 55,000 runners of the marathon, not just our 500 crew members.”
That is what being a run crew is all about. It’s support and energy for your community in a way that might not exist elsewhere in your life. We laugh that it’s easier to get a runner to come help moving furniture than a family member.
In terms of history, run crew culture is a lick of paint on the top of the Eiffel Tower, but the effect it’s had on modern society is astounding. If we’re having conversations about run culture being adopted by the mainstream, it’s important to understand that it’s crew culture that’s made the biggest dent in the narrative. It’s crew culture that’s getting the headlines in the big broadsheet newspapers and the primetime news segments. It’s crew culture that is giving people a home. It’s crew culture that is providing family for so many.
And crew culture is going nowhere.
“This is not a trend. This is a lifestyle. From what I hear, it’s changed a lot of lives for the better. I know I’m a lot better. If every Wednesday for the last 21 years I got with my graffiti friends and wrote in black books and smoked weed? I don’t think I would be as healthy as I am right now. I chose to use my Wednesday to be healthy.”
“It’s amazing that we went from something that was more about your personal crew getting better, faster, stronger… cooler to this global community that saves lives.”
“We’re the healthiest cult on the planet.”
Thanks, Mike Saes. You cooked up my favorite flavor of Kool-Aid.
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Thanks for reading
- Raz
I am a fan of Bridge Runners and am friends with a lot of their members but only someone who truly lacks knowledge of running history and culture would say that they invented the run club or running crew.
But Prospect Park Track Club was founded in 1970. So I'm not sure Mike Saes "invented" the run club 21 years ago, since PPTC predates NYC Bridge Runners by several decades. Unless a "crew" is different from a "club"? I'm confused here!