Running has always been among the simplest of the ways we punish ourselves in the name of fitness. It requires no gym membership, no fancy equipment or gear, unless that’s your thing, and minimal strategy aside from putting one foot in front of the other.

There’s a trend of community-focused, running-based clubs and events emerging here…

Beyond a good pair of shoes, it doesn’t demand any dedicated equipment. Even the idea of running shoes is a recent development; look at a finish-line photo from a marathon in the 1970s, and you’ll see more than a few pairs of Chuck Taylors. Running is a no-frills type of situation, and it’s basically free.

But this is 21st century America, so here come the frills and the fees. There’s a trend of community-focused, running-based clubs and events emerging here, connecting runners and the run-curious in a deeper, more immersive way than the old charity 5km. Like everything else right now, the trend is being led by influencers, entrepreneurs, and celebrity influencer entrepreneurs.

In 2024 and 2025, Blink-182 drummer Travis Barker organised a series of events called Run Travis Run, a running and wellness experience that allowed ticket holders to experience a day in Travis’s life – defined here as ‘run sort of near him.”

Superstar DJ Diplo’s Run Club is expanding throughout the States in 2025, offering “the ultimate reimagined 5km experience,” “iconic start-line energy,” “fire finisher sets,” and “an afterparty you won’t forget.”

These events give fans a chance to engage with their idols in a healthier venue than the back of a tour bus, let the celebs leverage their personal brands to sell some electrolyte powders, and allow me to imagine what “iconic start-line energy” entails. Everybody wins, particularly Travis Barker’s and Diplo’s accountants.

Well, grab your shoes and don’t forget your wallet, because there’s a new festival in town. Last year, I received an invitation to the second annual Runningman, a weekend-long “race-meets-retreat” in rural Georgia, created by serial entrepreneur and motivational speaker Jesse Itzler.

Runningman Festival – What’s It All About?

Over 48 hours, Runningman promised music, fellowship, the world’s largest sauna, and cold plunges, all taking place within the perimeter of a one-mile looping racecourse. The postrace headliner on Saturday night would be Mike Posner, a singer/rapper/producer and Song of the Year Grammy nominee. Seriously! In 2017, for “I Took a Pill in Ibiza!” I had to look it up, too!

For the low price of $895, approximately R15 500, Runningman offered a weekend that would “turn the traditional running event on its head.” Elite runners and newcomers alike would camp, mingle, and loop that loop to their heart’s content, enjoying breakout sessions featuring “industry leaders in health, wellness, and fitness,” presumably at least one who can tell me when those became three separate and distinct categories.

I like to run, I sort of know a couple of Mike Posner songs, and we all love spending nine hundred dollars to sleep on the ground. I said yes to Runningman, and in a special compartment right next to my Hokas, I packed my scepticism. I’m still not sure how much of it I brought back home with me.

Runningman takes place at Kingston Downs in the bucolic outskirts of Rome, Georgia, about an hour outside of Atlanta, on the footprint of what was once an equestrian steeplechase venue owned by a Saudi prince. In other words, in the middle of nowhere. When I arrive, the humid late-afternoon air is eerily still as I park my car in the hilltop lot, and I am reminded not only that so much of The Walking Dead was shot in rural Georgia, but also why.

The distant thumping bass of a party DJ spinning ’90s hip-hop draws me in, and as I gravitate toward the sound, a bustling athletes’ village comes into focus below. A camping area here, a “glamping” area with luxury yurts there, food trucks, merch tents, the giant sauna right next to the dozen hot tub–sized cold-plunge tubs. It is buzzing, and my home for the weekend will be a yurt right in the thick of it. I say “here we go” to myself, take a deep breath, and descend into the wellness chaos.

Nearly all the weekend’s thousand-or-so participants are already there by the time I arrive, and the energy is uniformly positive. Bro-hugs abound. “Hello” does not exist here, only “what up, what uuuppp.” The event has not officially begun, yet most of the male participants already have their shirts off. It is immediately clear that this is one of those environments where every person I meet can tell me what an “adaptogen” is.

I have come to Runningman alone, and I need someone to talk to, so I chat up the only other guy I can see with his shirt on. Derek, an aeronautical engineer from Texas, has been doing Ironman races for 11 years. “I’ve been up and down with it,” he says. “I’ve lost weight and gained weight over and over.” In the last year, he did six marathons, including two Ironmans and one ultra. But right now, he’s heavier than he’d like to be, and he’s turning 50 next year, so he wants to step it up a little bit. The truth hits hard: The only other guy at Runningman with his shirt on is an ultramarathon runner and multiple-Ironman finisher who wants to step it up a little bit.

Hang Out With Fitness Celebreties, Life Coaches, and Wellness Influencers

All around us, there are wellness celebrities, people with huge social media followings and life-coaching startups. Ben Smith of The Bachelorette is running breathwork sessions. Five-time CrossFit Games champion Mat Fraser is working the crowd, and if I know my CrossFit people, I know what he’s talking to them about. He’s talking to them about CrossFit.

And then there’s fitness entrepreneur and wellness influencer Devon Lévesque, who just weeks earlier had become the first person to do a backflip on the summit of Mt Everest. He is also the first person to bear-crawl a marathon. Devon Lévesque is great at being the first person to do a thing that a second person will never do. He too is extremely not wearing a shirt, and I get it. If I had a body like Devon Lévesque’s, I would not wear a shirt to your wedding.

Mike Posner has the serene effect of the enlightened, the kind of blissed-out vibe that makes you think, this is a man who has definitely done ayahuasca (plant-based psychedelic drug long used by indigenous people in South America for medicinal, spiritual, and ceremonial purposes). He had a couple of big hit songs in the 2010s, that Grammy nod in 2017, then walked away from the pop music game.

And he kept walking: In 2019, he set a goal to walk across the whole United States, which he did until he got bit by a rattlesnake in Colorado, and then after he got out of the hospital, he picked up where he left off and finished the job. And he’s summited Mt Everest, and he’s planning to run a 50km at Runningman. I ask what his self-talk is like, and please believe me when I tell you the following is both verbatim and about a tenth of what he said. “I am joy, I am faith, I am love, I am Mike Posner, see, hear, feel, and know: My destiny is to be the key that unlocks the magic potential of myself and many others. I am an embodiment of the divine, I am a conduit of blessings…”

And he keeps going, and I am happy that he is this happy, and I am also starting to wonder whether this is a man who has done ayahuasca today.

Throw Back To the VIP Room of Studio 54

Friday evening, I grab a BBQ jackfruit vegan sloppy joe from the Sunshine Alchemy food truck, to give myself at least the feeling of having made a healthy choice. Everyone is mixing and mingling joyfully in the world’s largest sauna, behaving in a way you imagine they must have in the VIP room of Studio 54: blissed-out smiles, guards completely down, sweat dripping off every chin and nose. But where the kids of the ’70s achieved this state largely through the medium of cocaine, the gang in the sauna is fuelled by ice baths, a success mindset, and Athletic Greens AG1.

It’s a healthier bargain, but let’s be honest: Even adjusted for inflation, the coke-and-nightclub route would have been a little cheaper. I reach into a cooler and grab a BRĒZ cannabis-and-mushroom-microdose beverage. A BRĒZ brochure reveals that the drink’s Lion’s Mane mushrooms are “craft-extracted and purified from fruiting bodies, and made instantly bioavailable through proprietary acoustic micronisation processing technology.” That series of words makes perfect sense to me in the moment, and that’s what makes me realise I’m on my third one. I duck out to craft-extract whatever kind of sleep one can get while low-key tripping on a performance drink in a luxury yurt.

Who Started It All?

Like a shocking number of successful entrepreneurs, Jesse Itzler got his start as a rapper. Under the nom de hip-hop “Jesse Jaymes,” Itzler released the 1991 album Thirty Footer in Your Face, and while its singles “College Girls (Are Easy)” and “Shake It Like a White Girl” failed to set the world on fire, titles like these no longer prevent a person from going on to have a respectable career in business.

He cofounded the private plane company Marquis Jet in his early 30s, his small-business incubator generated ZICO Coconut Water (which was later acquired by Coca-Cola), he’s part owner of the Atlanta Hawks, and his wife, Sara Blakely, is the founder of Spanx. Itzler is a frequent guest on optimisation-​dude podcasts of the Rich Roll variety, and his episodes have titles like “Stop Wasting Your Life Before It’s Too Late!” and “Why Your Mindset Is the KEY to Success!” Jesse Itzler’s zodiac sign is an exclamation point.

A few years ago, Itzler founded All Day Running Company, an enterprise focused on bumping up the event part of running events. “We’re living in an experience economy,” Itzler says, shortly after greeting me with a “what up, what uuuppp.” “The days of sitting on a beach are not where it is at now. Now people are paying for vacations where they climb a mountain.”

He’d been running marathons and ultras for decades, and increasingly, Itzler wanted to do more than just run, eat a banana, and go home. “Even with the destination marathons, you collect your medal and then you’re back in your room. I wanted a real, immersive, overnight experience, where there’s a pregame, and postrace recovery, and learning from experts, and music.

It didn’t exist, so we started to iterate around what that festival would look like, what kind of event would really set people up for success.” As you would expect from someone who uses the word “iterate” in this context, Itzler and his All Day Running Company team got to entrepreneuring, and in 2023, Runningman was born.

Because the actual race part of Runningman takes place on a one-mile loop, runners are free to choose their own adventures. Upon registration, participants had signed up for a 5km, a 10km, or a full marathon, but the intended distances are only suggestions. The idea is for all of us to run to our heart’s content at a pace that suits us. “Nobody’s here to set a PB,” as Itzler put it. “They’re here to get pictures.”

Ultra-Ironman Derek is here to add a social element to the often-lonely business of training. “I usually train on my own because I’m slow,” he says. “It’s not that the run clubs I’ve tried don’t support the slower runners. There’s just nobody back there, so in five minutes I’m all by myself.” Derek has set an intention to stay on the course and keep moving for the full eight hours of the event. Whether that ends up being a marathon (or more, or less) doesn’t matter. The movement is the objective.

Since you can see the entire Runningman loop from the starting line, you can clock its challenges: an incline here, a nice flat stretch there, a point at which you run so close to the DJ’s amps that it feels like C&C Music Factory has reunited inside your own cranium.

It’s A Mix of Elites and Your Backmarker at the Charity 5km Fun Run

But here’s the real genius of it: The race begins at 9am on Saturday, and by 9:05, all the runners are mixed together. The elites – renowned ultra-runner Courtney Dauwalter among them – lap the walkers right away, and the rest of us congeal into one big group not long after that. “In the New York Marathon there are 65 000 people there, and all I see the whole time is the eight people who are around me,” says Itzler.

At Runningman, the amateurs in the T-shirt from their last charity 5km run amid the NCAA sprinters who run amid the shirtless guys. “Here on the loop, I’m constantly passing new people,” Itzler says. “My kids have passed me three or four times, and I get to talk to them. That makes it very community-driven.”

The scenery doesn’t change on the Runningman course, but the faces do. Nobody knows if they or anyone else is on their third lap or their 13th or their 30th. It’s a roller-rink kind of energy, a new person popping up every few minutes offering encouragement or a simple “what up, what uuuppp.” Itzler is on and off the course all day, running, giving high fives, and almost certainly getting pitches from wannabe entrepreneurs.

I bump into Derek around midday. He seems to be living his best life. Instead of being isolated at the back of the back, today he has people in front of him, behind him, and at his side. Runners pass him or are passed by him, and many take a moment to really check in. “Today, I haven’t been alone for a minute,” he says.

I take a break to listen in on a talk about the connection between exercise and mental health. Raymond Braun is a young television reporter just back from a gig as a correspondent for the 2024 Paralympic Games, and he is telling the crowd about his battle with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Braun’s affliction was so intense that he couldn’t touch another human being, couldn’t eat food that hadn’t been boiled, and had become a virtual shut-in. A therapist recommended he try a running event as a form of exposure therapy, and because the traditional treatments for OCD were only getting him so far, he gave it a go. It appears to have worked: In 2023, Braun completed seven triathlons on seven continents in seven consecutive days.

Now in his spare time, he runs marathons as a guide for disabled runners. He considers himself in recovery from his OCD. I’m happy for him, even if the connection between his exercise and my mental health is a negative one, in that he is making me feel like a slacker. Back to the course I go.

I myself signed up to run 10km, and I ended up running 18km. Had I set out to run 18km, I’d have been dreading it. If I were on a traditional course, I’d be looking for mile markers the way a cubicle rat watches the clock. Today, I just kept moving. Maybe I was in the middle of a good conversation, maybe the DJ started playing “My Boo,” or maybe it just felt good to run, but for whatever reason, I kept saying to myself: “Okay, one more lap.” I actually could have gone further, but people were packing into the world’s largest indoor sauna for hot yoga and a DJ set, and you just don’t get opportunities like that very often.

Mike Posner ends up running 50km, then does the live performance we’ve been promised. He plays some hits, he tries out some newer songs, he becomes the first artist I’ve ever seen lead a crowd through a Wim Hof three-part breathing exercise as part of his between-song patter. After his encore, I go back to my yurt, blissfully depleted, and sleep the sleep of the just.

I catch up with Derek the next morning. As he had set out to do, he stayed on the course for the full eight hours of Runningman, completing a marathon and some change. But more importantly, he found himself with the fellowship and support he’d been craving. “There was a group who yelled my name at the finish line, and I don’t even know how they knew it,” he enthused. “I’ve never had anything like this.” And then he excuses himself, because goat yoga is about to start.

By early afternoon on Sunday, the breakout sessions are pretty much finished, and the September sun is turning Kingston Downs into the world’s largest outdoor sauna. The vendors are taking down their tents, yesterday’s runners are now heading to their cars, arms overflowing with free samples of Honey Stinger organic energy stroopwafels and Goodwipes aloe-enhanced flushable towelettes. It’s like an aspirational version of The Walking Dead, one in which the zombies have an insatiable hunger for pure, plant-based protein powder.

Throughout it, I found the fundamental unseriousness of Runningman to be the thing that made me dig that much deeper. It inverted the “no pain, no gain” fitness ethic I grew up on and set me running toward the goal of simply doing the best I could.

Itzler’s All Day Running Company colleague Luke Wendlandt agrees: “I was that guy 10 years ago: Embrace the suck. But now I know that’s garbage. Do you. If ‘you’ is a three-kilometre walk, awesome. If ‘you’ is a 16-kilometre run, fantastic. Do whatever you need to do to be enough for you.”

Enough for me ended up being more than I thought I could do, and the chatter in the sauna says that was the consensus. I never checked the results online to see how I did relative to everyone else, because who cares? If everyone’s doing the best they can, then everyone wins. Maybe it’s the functional mushrooms talking, but I almost believe it.

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