A little bit about Running Roadies Club!

What started as just a whatsapp group with 5 members to share photos and videos after a 5k running event in January of 2018 slowly become a group with 50 members, slowly gradually organically expanding, members bringing in their friends and family members. Registering for various events together as a team to weekend meetups and celebrations in cubon park and kanteerva stadium (in Bengaluru) and running together discussing about healthy lifestyle and volunteering for various social causes.  We decided to register for the upcoming Stadium Run in 2018 in 12 Hour relay format which needed a group/team name to Register and we started brainstorming various names and Running Roadies name stood out as we wanted it to be primarily about Running(Obviously !) and as everyone in group was from different backgrounds and age group, Roadies because we wanted it to eventually become a group where people from all walks of life come together, Roadies meaning travellers coming together for a common passion seemed apt. Logo we decided to have as a kid running with a bag as the idea was to keep that kid alive in our hearts and run and celebrate runs fully and as we grow still not to forget that kid life free happy attitude.

Now that we were participating in various events as team, Slowly we got curious about learning more about behind the scenes of how events were organized and started looking for opportunities to volunteer for some Running event. And there came an opportunity but it was to support a cycling event as volunteers. We said yes to support thinking Volunteer role would be to support with hyderation support or something like that, which turned out to be not so and the person with idea needed much more support, and the small group of excited runners became organizers of the cyclothon event. Slowly as the group grew we planned to host our debut Running Event - Gratitude Run was born, we did not wanted to just have a normal casual event but wanted to have a deeper social cause linked to it. Cause linked to Gratitude Run was of awareness for depression and suicide prevention and we implimented various implimentable actions - one of them being getting out team of 20 members trained for Suicide Prevention Course to help people in our Social Circles.

Slowly as we grew and group started getting noticed, more and more organizers started approaching us as they needed support with organizing their events too. This brought lot of good opportunities and we supported events as Pinkathon, Procam TCS 10k, Apollo Hospital Stroke Awareness Event, Aster Hospital Walkathon Event, Supreme event, BBMP Go Native Plog Run, Govt of Karnataka organized Millet Run, Go Sports Store launch Running event and various others. Some of the memorable Running Events that we took part in as team are for sure Coorg Barefoot Run, Devil Circuit, Bangalore Mountain Festival, the Crazy epic Bangalore to Mysore 140 km Relay Run(This one needs a seperate post of its own), and a lot more. As from the start itself we wanted it to be meaningful and much more than just Running, we got to volunteer for some social causes too like Job Fair for people with Disablity, Wheelchair Badminton Event, Organized and raised funds for Kerala and Coorg Floods, Covid Relief Fundraising event and various other time to time.

As group started expanding, alongwith Running group we got into other similar areas too like cycling, trekking, healthy eating, home farming, crossfit and calisthenics, monthly workout challenges and then came some not directly Running or health related initiatives like book club, Meditation and Minimalism, Money and Investing, Kids related initiatives, Women Empowerment Initiatives and various others. It became a big web of all various initiatives where members joined in what initiative they were more inclined towards apart from just the initial Running group. 2020 as Covid started spreading and all events were postponed and we had to put a pause on group meetups, we started focussing more on staying healthy through various fun crossfit and run and workout at home challenges. We started hosting Virtual events and opened for all so slowly eventually a lot of non Bengaluru members started joining in too. A Lot of free Virtual events to keep all members active while being at home, this made us expand all over India and presence grew to almost all states in india (and a couple more Countries too). On one hand it was important to keep everyone inspired to continue working out and at other hand we formed a Covid Support group and divided members in teams to support as much as we could for people who were looking for Hospital beds, oxygen, medicins, etc.

New varients of covid and repeatative lockdowns have limited in person events flow like before and we had to postpone our Bangalore to Mysore 2.0 too. A Super fun Jouney it has been till now since the start of Forming Running Roadies Club and it is a blessing to come across so many inspiring members. I would say it is mostly a member driven Club where everyone takes up leadership and keeps each other inspired challenging each other to be the best version of themselves. A long way to go but we are in no way in a hurry to grow or expand. Quality and bond between members is much bigger than number of members in the club we feel.