No boys allowed
It's clear that we need safe spaces for women as much as ever. With Hot Boys Athletics in London, Kimiko Ninomiya has done that in the form of a running club.
A look into my process. I usually have half a dozen interviews banked, so every week I choose which one I write up. Current events inform this decision, so what have I been noticing of late?
Artist du jour, Chappell Roan speaking out about her increasing numbers of stalkers
Elon Musk suggesting a republic of “free-thinking” “high-status males” is the solution
Self-diagnosed high-status male, Andrew Tate boasting about trafficking and exploiting women
Olympic athlete, Rebecca Cheptegei was set on fire by her ex-boyfriend, suffering 75% burns
Yeah, this is going to be another man-hating article. Sorry, lads.
The subject of this week’s interview? Kimiko Ninomiya of Hot Boys Athletics, a women-only running club in London that is as much a performance incubator as it is a a haven from the everyday dangers of existing as a woman.
Kimi moved from New York to London around the start of the pandemic. In NYC, she had been training with Black Roses, under the tutelage of Knox Robinson, so she was disappointed not to find any running clubs with the same vibe that she was used to.
She found Your Friendly Runners in East London “when it was still relatively small,” and while it was just right from a social element it didn’t quite have the intensity she was looking for. Kimi wanted training partners. Kimi wanted to run fast with her friends.
“When I moved, it was really difficult to find people that you could run with consistently. Often, it was men who were inconsistent or not showing up and that's just not what I was used to from Black Roses. The men in that group are so, so supportive of the women. The sense that I got was that men [in London] weren't necessarily willing to sacrifice their training to train with a friend who was a woman.”
On top of that, the world felt unfriendly for women, to say the least. As well as the high profile case of Sarah Everard in south London, there was also a young man molesting women in nearby Hackney Marshes.
Somewhat fed up with her experience thus far, and still in touch with Knox Robinson and Black Roses, Kimiko decided to build her own house of excellence. A coaching program by Robinson, coupled with her definition of what a performance-focused, women-only run club could and should be, Hot Boys Athletics was born.
“When I was starting Hot Boys, I knew that the diversity of the groups that I was a part of wasn't really good enough for me.”
NO BOYS ALLOWED
If you read “Hot Boys Athletics” and sense a slightly antagonistic tone, you would be correct, of course. To be clear, Kimi didn’t build this group for hot boys. Or any boys at all.
“It's a bit of cheeky commentary on the running scene where all the boys think they're hot shit and won't give time to women, when we are the ones that are actually now performing at a higher level more consistently.”
“We’re doing harder things, and looking a lot cooler doing it.”
A key component of Hot Boys is that everyone in the group understands what it is to be a woman. It becomes less antagonistic.
“The importance of having women's spaces - beyond physical safety - is that the physicality of running as a woman is so much different than it is for a man.”
While more and more people are running marathons, and taking their training suitably seriously, off-the-peg training regimens largely are linear. They’re made for men. They are less likely to take hormonal cycles into consideration.
Two important components of the group’s training is that 1) it’s structured around feel, and 2) it’s built around community.
“It's about understanding your body, and being able to talk about where you're at in your cycle and relate to people through training. If I show up on the track, and I’m not really feeling it today, I just started my period, everyone understands. It is such a safe space to talk about those things. You just don't get that in a normal day-to-day setting.”
“People might come from families that are highly driven by women with a lot of maternal elements. That's not what I come from. I don't have any siblings - didn't have sisters - so I just didn't have that community around me that I now have, and I think there's so much benefit that's come out of it being a women's only group.”
Nobody works as hard as you do for what you want
Originally from California, Kimiko lived in New York for 10 years after university. While there was some track and field and other “typical sports” in high school, NYC is where she really started running.
“I was going through some tough times just settling in a new city. It was my first time really being away from home, and I would go for long runs by myself. That really helped me center myself, like active meditation. It was a way to escape what was going on.”
While a lot of her current work revolves around a group run setting, the solo hard training she undertook is one of the things that led to the formation of Hot Boys Athletics. The more ages-old, more formal athletics clubs in the UK met her performance criteria, but Kimiko needed the social aspect as well.
“It's really, really hard to train on your own and be consistent. When I was doing 12x 1K on a track by myself? It was just a grind.”
The group is small, though. Purposefully so. With around 30 members, sessions host around 20 Hot Boys at a time, and despite the attractiveness of, and clear need for a group like this, there is no intention to expand.
London has certainly grown and developed as a running scene, it’s largely been in the social running space - fueled by Instagram snapshots of fast friendships. These crews might add the performance element in as they grow, but it’s the promise of pastries and pints that primarily brings people to many of the larger clubs.
“Part of the reason why I try not to post a lot on Instagram and keep it pretty vague is that I'm not trying to scale to like hundreds of people. It’s a pretty good size and it's the most amazing vibe with the most amazing supportive women. Everyone is everyone's biggest cheerleader. It's still performance-based. It's really hard work and I think it's really bonded everyone in a special way.”
A recent training camp on the volcanic island of Lanzarote boasted double threshold days, for instance, but that’s something they got through as a team. A recent achievement includes being the first all-female team to finish the latest incarnation of The Speed Project - an uncharted 400km foot race from Chamonix to Marseille.
“It's come together as a collective because women also know that things don't get done on their own. Everyone contributes, which is super special. It's honestly more than I ever could have expected starting out.”
How do you carry your keys?
In your pocket? Maybe between your fingers like Kimi’s grandmother taught her to do. While running fast with a dependable group of friends is a wonderfully rose-tinted view of what Hot Boys Athletics set out to do, let’s go back to the nasty bit: the threat of men.
“All of us have Find My Friends on all the time. Literally all the time. It's just something that women are so aware of.”
“I think it's as much of an awareness problem as it is just an actual problem because when those things are going on, maybe it's talked about more, but I think men just kind of forget after a time.”
That’s a luxury that women simply can’t afford. Two years after the young man prowling for women on Hackney Marshes, Kimiko still looks for an alternative route. There’s always another attacker to worry about.
The threat of men is a specter that has long loomed over women. Just like the racist riots across the UK that shocked so many, it’s not an indicator that the world is getting worse. It’s always been like this. I used to walk past National Front graffiti on the way to school. I remember Margaret Muller’s unsolved murder in Victoria Park in 2003. That winter morning, the artist was jogging the same popular east London route that the founders of Your Friendly Runners met on 15 years later.
Rebecca Cheptegei died of her injuries while I was writing this piece. If you’ve got down this far, you likely don’t need convincing that male violence exists. You likely don’t need it explained that Rebecca didn’t simply die of her injuries. She returned home from competing in the Olympic Games (wow!), and was murdered in horrific fashion by a former lover - someone she trusted the most intimately. That’s just the reality of the world we all have to live in.
While feelings of injustice can simmer beneath the surface, it’s more difficult to forget about deeply traumatic events. Sometimes, it’s easier to just create a new way of living.
Kimiko Ninomiya has created a crucially important space that has given a sliver of freedom to a group of women in London using the power of running. Hot Boys Athletics has changed the world in a small but definite way. This is another blueprint to making positive change in the world. Over to you.
Further reading
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Thanks for reading
- Raz
The keys between the fingers 💔 loved this piece
Thank you so much for sharing this perspective