Sikhs In The City: a Cosmopolitan running club
The East London running club has long boasted diversity and all-age inclusion among its goals within the running community, but the Sikhs In The City are now looking to (literally) build their legacy.
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Taking their name from a 2006 BBC documentary on their founding members - five Sikh men, with an average age of well over 80, who ran the Edinburgh marathon relay - Sikhs In The City is a running club that champions the ethos of social equity and over a decade after its 2009 formation is one of the foremost Asian-led running clubs in the UK.
President and Head Coach of Sikhs In The City, Harmander Singh is the man who trained Fauja Singh (one of the original SITC) to five age-category world records in one day as he ran the 100m, 200m, 400m, 800m, 1500, 1 mile, and 5000m distances back in 2011. Phew. Three days later he became the first 100-year-old to complete a marathon as he ran Toronto Waterfront in a shade over 8hrs.
You can relax. Fauja retired soon after.
Harmander however, is still going. A world record holder in his own right, the 63-year-old is the only person to have run both the London Marathon and the Great North Run for the last 38 years consecutively. Quite the run streak.
A World Marathon Majors Six Star medal holder, he tells me he might be the “first British Asian or maybe first Sikh” to achieve the international running feat. It’s understandable that someone with medals from 1100 races, including 297 half marathons (“The wife won’t let me put up medals because they’ll gather dust.”), as well as a plethora of awards for serving his local community of Redbridge (my glorious hometown) that the exact details of his achievements might get lost along the way.
The major goal of Sikhs In The City is to promote diversity and equity within the sport of running. The group is a registered charity with a one-off membership fee of £100 minus your age - a novel way of raising funds while ensuring incredible value for money whatever age you are. For reasons far beyond economics, however, SITC remains unaffiliated with UK Athletics.
“On principle, we are strong advocates for inclusivity, and in the top six tiers of decision making in UK Athletics and Sport England, there’s not a single Asian.”
“We’ve challenged them on it and they’ve come up with a lot of excuses like they’re concentrating on women first. Well then what about Asian women? We’re not saying the world class athletes on the boards shouldn’t be there. We’re saying that we should be there too.”
“We would much rather the government take much sterner action and say that if you’re taking funding from the taxpayer, we’re going to appoint people who bring value to your organization.”
It’s not all bluster, either. Harmander and SITC lead by example. Of the nine executives, five are women, and having “trained over 300 people to run marathons, including Asian grandmothers,” he is personally committed to changing the demographic makeup of the average runner.
“If you can’t see someone like you [doing something], you can’t aspire to be like them.”
What do you like about running, Harmander?
“Well, team sports are great but you need the whole team there to do it. This, you can do at your time - day or night. You can do it in the middle of the night…”
This weekend will be Harmander’s 39th consecutive London Marathon. He even ran the virtual edition in 2020 after the in-person event was restricted to elite runners due to the pandemic. Here’s the segue from the previous quote:
“I was the very first person to complete the virtual marathon because I started at midnight.”
“There were lights on the side of the road, I had my Seiko stadium clock from our club set up in one part of my garden, a bench with all my drinks on and the toilet was next door. I covered a marathon distance in just under 7 hrs in my garden. By the time the official virtual event started, I was already finished.”
The London Marathon wasn’t the only distance event that Harmander completed in his garden during the pandemic.
“In the very first lockdown - when Captain Tom did 100 laps of his garden - I did 4300 laps of my garden in 47 days. I covered 874 miles in my garden. That’s from Lands End to John O’Groats!”
Those lockdowns in spring 2020 were a funny time, weren’t they? Don’t leave the house! Do some exercise! Don’t go further than one mile from your house, though! Run the length of Great Britain in your garden! Why not?
Very few people knew whether they were coming or going. Because of their position in the Asian community, which was deemed at greater risk of complications from COVID-19, Sikhs In The City became an important hub for helping people stay healthy.
“We got a number of grants to help people stay active. The way we did it was on the first of the month, just very slowly go up and down the stairs for one minute every day. Add a minute every week. After you can do 5 mins of walking up and down the stairs at home, we’ll learn stretching and warm-up. Then I’ll ask you to go out of the door, turn left, and jog very slowly until you don’t feel like doing it any more. Once you’ve done that, stop and turn home. The next day you go further and then further, and not ‘til you go for 10 mins do we talk about training for speed or distance.”
It’s a great way of getting someone moving. I reckon everyone knows somebody who could benefit from this kind of incremental increase in activity and everyone can be a coach. Yes, YOU can be a coach. Find that person that you know could do this and gently suggest it. Check in with them and see how they’re progressing. Maybe you’ll be able to make a difference to someone you care about.
Why do you run, Harmander?
“I was mischievous at school - I was always in trouble. My PE teacher (John Salisbury, an Olympic silver medalist) says, ‘Harmander, you’ve got too much energy to burn. Why don’t you take up sport?’ So I played football, hockey, athletics… and I carried on with the running. My parents said that as long as I’d done my homework, I could go running. I used to go running at 11 at night.”
“I ran the 10k and did 30m14s on track, but as time got on, I got injured. I broke my ankle and I had cartilage problems from playing football. I just wanted to enjoy the running that I always enjoyed. My uncle - who is 78 and still does sub 5 hr marathons - said, ‘Why don’t you try marathon running instead of 10ks? You can run slower and longer and you’ll be out of the house. It’ll save you doing the washing up.”
While on the surface it seems that Harmander only started running because someone who cared about him told him to, and then only started running marathons because someone else who cares about him told him to, he’s been paying that goodwill forward and spreading the joy of health ever since.
What do you do to make running suck less?
“I started helping others, which I found much more rewarding. I try to encourage people to believe in themselves. When people start running again, what often puts them off is the breathlessness. It’s because they still remember how it was running around in a playground at school. I try telling them to slow down, take it easy, and see what progress they can make.”
With just a few races remaining on Harmander’s bucket list, including the world’s fastest marathon in Granada, Spain, marathons in Australia and New Zealand, and the original marathon in Athens (running tourism is an incredible way of making running suck less - see below for more), I couldn’t help but wonder: What’s next for Sikhs In The City?
“Redbridge Council gave us a piece of land of 108 sq m (1150 sq ft) for free for 100 years as long as we build a clubhouse there, so we’re building a clubhouse. We’re collecting money and we intend for all our runners who want to leave a legacy to be able to display their medals on one of the walls. That’s where all my medals are going.”
1100 medals? They’re going to need a bigger clubhouse!
Running Tourism
Running tourism is great, especially because it doesn’t need to be a cross-continental expedition to run another 26.2 miles, although if marathons are something you’re checking off a list, it’s not a bad way to do it.
When I moved from London to Los Angeles, I used races and running groups across my new home city to learn about it. I ran the Malibu half-marathon and couldn’t see the ocean for 20ft hedges. Running alongside multiple Santa Clauses in Santa Monica at Christmas. Ploughing a desperately lonely Hollywood Boulevard at 6am. Being in the post-5k… 4k beer garden in Griffith Park at 6.19am after the race organizers failed to understand that the K in 5k is a real unit of measurement. I luckily now know the one-way streets of DTLA like the back of my hand. Running helped me truly understand this city and I am grateful for it.
Similarly, I like to run a 10k when I’m in a new city. The last big international trip I took to Porto, I took a guided running tour of the city and it was eye-opening in ways a book or website could never be. I learned more about Portuguese political and cultural history from my guide in those 90 minutes than I could have from any written or recorded guide. I wholeheartedly recommend it.
Have you performed any running tourism? Tell me about it below. I love hearing new methods!
Harmander’s methods of building a running community:
Believe in the power of diversity and social equity
Be active in improving the health of your community
Coach your fellow runners to lasting greatness
Try to build cultural representation to inspire the next generation
Ways to make running suck less covered today:
Run through a new city
Slow down! It’s less difficult
Help someone set/achieve/surpass their goals
Think about the washing up at home that you’re not doing
Find Sikhs In The City online
Website / Instagram / Facebook / Donate to the Fauja Singh Clubhouse
Wow, what a great story. I didn’t realise how much Harmander and the SITC organisation have achieved. Well done!
“the race organizers failed to understand that the K in 5k is a real unit of measurement” actually made me lol, good job. Another great read, thanks Raz!