Inspiring the city to take up an active lifestyle

NILGIRIS: What began as a fitness pursuit by three individuals in Chennai’s Alwarpet neighbourhood back in 2006 has turned into one of the city’s largest community movement for fitness and health – the Chennai Runners.

Ram Viswanathan, Vidyuth Sreenivasan and Hari Shankar are the “forerunners” of the not-for-profit club, as the website describes the trio, who met during a morning run.

“Soon we began coordinating our runs, and as more runners signed up, we opened a Google group and named it Chennai Runners,” recollected Viswanathan.

Road running is the fastest-growing individual sport in India, with over 1,600 timed events across the country and reportedly 700 new runners lacing up each day.

A popular fitness routine globally for a long, road running only caught on in India in the aughts, but has grown rapidly since and is now a multi-million-dollar industry in the country.

As the most prominent running club in the southern metropolis, Chennai Runners has played an important role in inspiring the city to take up an active lifestyle, and also powers the popular Chennai Marathon, which will celebrate its 12th edition in January 2024.

“In the early years we used to have our quarterly long runs on the East Coast Road. I think we started out with 30-odd runners and by the time we got to our 17th long run we were several hundred from across the city,” Viswanathan reminisced.

The club has 16 chapters across Chennai, with close to 3,000 active members, and organizes regular events for its runners. The marquee Chennai Marathon is a much-awaited date on the city’s running calendar and last year attracted almost 22,000 participants across categories.

The club is currently headed by Dr Lakshmi Sundar, a medical professional who took to road running in 2014.

Dr Lakshmi, who completed her first full marathon in 2020, believes running is particularly empowering for women, and from the time she took to the sport and now the percentage of women runners in the city has considerably grown.

“However, many women tend to stop with the 10 km distance. To address this, we introduced a mentorship program, now in its third year, where women runners are being guided by senior runners and our Women Ambassadors to prepare for longer distances like the half marathon, 20-miler and the classic marathon,” she said.

The club organized a Couch to 5K running program in April this year to encourage new runners, which she said was a big success. “At least 25 % of them continue to train with us on a regular basis. We look to hold such programs regularly to encourage more people to take up running.”