Getting old with Old Man Run Club in New-York.
We caught up with Ryo, Dao and Eugene on a chilly saturday morning in New York for a run around town.
Why don’t we start with something unique such as a short introduction of you three…
Dao: I’m Dao-Yi Chow. We met each other separately. I met Eugene around 14 or 15 years ago, in 2004. I met Rio in 2008. 2004 and 2008. And they already knew each other.
Eugene: I’m Eugene Tong. I met Dao in 2004, and I started working with his brand in 2010. My background is as a magazine editor. Dao is a designer. We started forming the club after Dao ran his first marathon in November 2016. I’d just started running in September of that year, and I thought it might be cool do a marathon too. When I started training though, I realized that it’s really hard to know what to do since I’d never really run before. We were joking around, and I said I felt like an old man. From there, we came up with the name “Old Man Run Club.” We recruited these guys around us to be a part of it.
All of us trained for this past year’s marathon. That’s when we started talking about the club as if it was a real thing… then it became a real thing (laughs).
Ryo: I’m Ryo Yamamoto. I’m the director of creative services at Urban Studio, a post-production studio. We all just came together in a way. We had Dao who created clothing, Eugene who styled it on people, and I would come in at the end to make it appeal to the general public. We always got along as friends and we started running together after a while. They are a lot faster than me. After the marathon, I told them that I hated running with them. I didn’t want them waiting for me at the stop – that way I wouldn’t lose time resting with them.
Then we started sending out group text messages to all the people we were training with for the marathon. Just something simple to get organized. That was 16 runs ago.
Eugene: After the marathon was over, we were looking for a reason to stay motivated and continue running. We were all part of a Nike project called Moonshot. That’s where we met basically everyone in our club. We all felt that the group training method was super helpful. We wanted to keep that going post-marathon and began organizing long runs on Saturdays. We’ve done one every Saturday since.
Aside from that, the three of us try to run together once or twice a week. It’s been fun.
Is it still just good fun or are you beginning to feel more competitive between you all? Are things getting more “serious”?
Ryo: It’s serious in the sense that we want to continue running. When I ran the New York Marathon, I told the guys that I was one and done. I promised Dao that if he finished a marathon, so would I. Then, the day after the marathon, we got our medals engraved and we had brunch… and we entered the lottery for the Berlin marathon. Turns out that we got in! The three of us will be representing the Old Man Run Club at the Berlin marathon. We also have the New York Half Marathon tomorrow, the Brooklyn Half in May, and we’re shooting for Tokyo in 2020 (an Olympic year).
Dao: I think that ours is a bit different from some other run clubs because it isn’t so serious. It’s simply for people who like or love running. We always say that this isn’t really the run club to join if you’re trying to set a PR. There are plenty of other run clubs in New York for that.
I think a lot of our members enjoy the lack of pressure. Nobody is worried about running worse than someone else. It’s about bringing people together on the weekend and giving them the motivation to get up and out early in the morning. That’s our identity. Getting people involved in the sport of running. There are other great programs for becoming a better athlete. We’ll introduce you to the sport, make it fun, and push you a little bit in terms of distance. Though, for us, striking the right balance means that it will never be super serious.
Individually, we have our own goals, but as a group – Old Man and Old Woman Run Club – the mentality is that running itself is a long race. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
It definitely feels like there is a family spirit…
Eugene: The run club scene reminds me a lot of retail. Lots of the run clubs you’ll find are like the retail shops – very serious with performance-based appeal. We, on the other hand, approach it like a lifestyle and a community. A lot like what you’re doing with Distance. It’s about running and meeting new people that are like-minded.
Basically, the idea is to be more inclusive than exclusive.
OMRC: Exactly.
Eugene: It can be intimidating in some of those more performance-driven clubs.
Ryo: We have a friend, Katie, who came out a few weeks ago. We were running from here to Flushing, Queens – a 13-mile run. She said that her goal was to get over the 59th Street bridge, about 6 miles. She ended up finishing the entire thing. She was in pain the whole week after, but she’s come to every run since then and has finished every single one. She knows more about her limits and she’s adopted a different mentality. It doesn’t matter how fast you do it, just get to the finish.
What’s the story behind the logo?
Ryo: The logo really ties into the idea of the Old Man Run Club. Every time we’d run, the next day it was all aches and pains, so there may be a special post-fun product that inspired us a bit. Let’s just say we like flying tigers (laughs).
