Better late than never , on a warm spring evening in Koreatown, Los Angeles last May (2019), one of our guys went for a run with the now infamous Koreatown Running Club KRC. If somehow the films from that night have been lost for a few months , we finally got them back! So here we are with a few pictures from that night and an interesting Q&A with founder of the crew Duy Nguyen. It’s all love from Distance to KRC from Paris/Lyon to L.A.
As most of our readers may not be familiar with KRC, could you please quickly sum it all up for them? Who are you, what is KRC and what are you doing besides of having one of the hottest and coolest running crew around at the moment?
Duy Nguyen: I’m Duy. I founded Koreatown Run Club with my friend Mike back in 2016. KRC is essentially a forever growing group of friends turned family who started off running with each other. It’s generally pretty laid back, everyone is welcome. Fun community things, but now and then we’ll fuck around and do 200 milers together.
There has been a lot of running crews popping up all around Europe and the USA, what was your desire when starting the crew, did you think like there was something missing and that you could add something to the scene.
It was a little different for us when we started. We had no ideas run crews even existed. Mike and I weren’t runners. I think the longest I ever ran was a mile around my block. We wanted to do something fun and active in our community of Koreatown and kind of just fell into running. We ended up doing it once a week and more and more people showed up to run with us. Today we host five runs a week.
It wasn’t until other runners from around the world started to follow us on Instagram that we realized we were just a little speck in this running thing. There were other crews out there that have been doing this for ages. I think that coming in blind helped us do things a little differently. There was no blueprint that we were aware of, we just did things our way.
How did you felt in love with Running? Most of the people we talk with that now have brands, crews have a moment in their life when either something went wrong or they were in quest for a change and started running, then it became a sort of therapy. Was there a turning point for you as well or has it all been just for fun from the beginning?
I’m still waiting to fall in love with running. Still waiting for that high people are talking about. While I don’t necessarily love running itself, I love what it can do and how it can bring people together.
I think the runners we have that initially were only performance driven are learning to have more fun with it. They’re seeing running in a new light with us. Same goes for our casual runners. They’re pushing themselves more being around more serious or faster folks. It’s a good relationship. We’re seeing people grow. These are adults that are still learning more and more about who they are as runners and who they are as people. It’s a beautiful thing to see. That’s why we do it.
You were recently in Haiti for a caritative project, could you tell us more about it? How was it?
Yeah, 200 miles in seven days of running across the country. I tell people the idea of KRC was born in Haiti. I went there on assignment to shoot this ultra-marathon for The North Face. It’s an ultra to showcase the country and help families out of poverty and into jobs put on by a great organization Work (dowork.org). I came back to the States and started KRC. I’ve been going back to Haiti for the run each year since to film. This year I decided to attempt the run itself and brought a few friends with me. We actually just got back last night. It was gnarly. Marathon after marathon after marathon, eventually your body just gives up trying to be normal and is like, “Okay this is what we do. Wake up at 3am and run up mountains for hours at a time.”
When will we see you guys in France? You should come and turn up for a run!
Would love to go back. I’ve been to Paris and Marseille but never Lyon. I’m a Lacazette fan.