Why I Built a Running Club

Without Invitation in Action, Part I

A Different Register

Stuck in a noisy flat, working a dead-end job — so I decided: I’ll start a running club.

Nobody in Montrose was looking to a supermarket delivery driver to lead a community-fitness adventure. Too often, leadership is expected to come dressed in blazer-committee confidence. But when a few local runners thought the best place to meet was outside Tesco or the chip shop, I realised: yep, this will have to be me.

So I picked the sports centre. It had a waiting area, changing rooms, lights, parking. And I set regular nights, because “turn up when you feel like it” doesn’t inspire new-member confidence. Hardly grand strategy — but already a different register from small-town motivations.

The Bones of a Club

Through the first winter we met once a week and gathered a loyal wee group. But before long came the clamour for kit. Polyester billboards for values we hadn’t reached yet weren’t high on my to-do list.

Instead, I started with the bones of a club: branding, membership, insurance, constitution, rules — the structures that make a club more than a Facebook group.

I aimed to be open to everyone — which, in a running club, meant people who didn’t even enjoy running. I did wonder what the hell I was doing more than once.

But a good running club can become one of the few accessible doors in a town when sport still hides behind ability barriers, cliques, and closed committees. And as the club grew, there was genuine fun: handicap runs, socials, long runs, hill reps, relays, head-torch runs, pub crawls, holidays, prize-givings. Two or three sessions a week. A community.

Rivalries Begin

Working-class ambition is admirable in a town like Montrose — until it starts to work.

Success rippled — and in some cases, offended. Parkrun organisers didn’t seem to want to support a new club sharing the town’s name. Maybe over-confident short-sightedness, maybe ties to another club just up the road.

Eventually came the predictable splinter-group moment. I thought I was building the Tesco of running clubs: structured, reliable, open to all. My rival? Disappointingly not even Asda — just a trestle table in our car park selling cheap T-shirts and taking selfies.

Dictatorship to Committee

I was happy to play dictator for a while — but I thought about succession from day one, sensing that I cared more about structures, growth, and impact than managing agendas. Some mistook my open hand to get involved as weakness. Others couldn’t build bigger than themselves.

Montrose already had its “impact people” — but I wasn’t the type of chairperson waiting for a handshake from the Queen.

I knew early exactly what I was building — a real club, not a social page or a personal brand. That clarity made me decisive; it ruffled feathers, but I wanted to get the Flyers flying.

Others gave support and credibility that I’m grateful for. Many were good company and wanted the best for the club and the town. But when it came to building structures, I carried most of the weight. In the end, I found one person willing and able to provide support and share the real work — and that was enough to keep it going.

Why I Did It

Why build a club nobody asked for? I’d run as a skinny lad, an out-of-shape returner, and by 2017 was seeing some success. I had insight, saw a gap, and stepped into it.

It was really hard work. But I held it together because I believed in consistency, inclusivity, creativity. My ego was there too — I wanted to see if I could bend a community around these values and build something lasting, bigger than any individual. Sometimes I welcomed rivalries to fuel motivation and interest. Sometimes I was stung by the animosity I encountered.

In the end, I motivated strangers to come together, get active, improve. Over three years, the club grew to more than sixty members, with multiple weekly sessions, a constitution committing to gender balance and charity giving, a solid bank balance, and an elected committee — a club that survives today because enough scaffolding was put in place.

It changed me. I learned I could build something people relied on — that sometimes belief has to come before legitimacy.

I didn’t wait for an invitation — I made my own door, and plenty followed through it.

Michael Loudon — Without Invitation

Adapted from my earlier essay “Big Club Mentality”, first published on Race The Machine.
That version looked at the nuts and bolts of building a club; this one explores the currents behind it.