Run Clubs Are the New Dating Apps

After years of dating in New York City, 31-year-old Jeniea Howard decided to shake it up since the apps just weren’t working for her anymore. It’s a common sentiment among Gen Z and Millennial singles, one which Howard blames on the COVID-19 pandemic. In her mind, years of swiping during lockdown had led to a stagnation that left her feeling frustrated and yearning for something different.

“We’re in a little bit of a weird situation now where humans are desperate for connection and desperate to meet up, but we sort of lost our social skills in terms of meeting someone in real life,” she says.

So, Howard laced up her shoes and headed out to run around the city with hundreds of other singles hoping to meet their match.

Over the past year, there’s been a lot of chatter online about how dating is broken. An entire generation has grown up primarily seeking a partner by swiping through endless seas of interchangeable dating apps, and it’s becoming clear that, for many, it isn’t working. Recently, New York Magazine spoke to several women who had gone viral for posting videos of themselves crying over the state of their romantic lives, and the app Bumble received huge backlash for its ad campaign promoting “anti-celibacy” in apparent response to a trend of women who said they were throwing in the towel (the company laid off more than 300 employees earlier this year after waning profits).

As headlines proliferated about just how bad it is out there, another type of dating content began to go viral on social media. Singles began to post on TikTok and elsewhere that they may have found the perfect place to meet their match: run clubs.

“My single girl tip if you are looking for ways to meet people off of the apps,” wrote Lexis Angioletti, a 33-year-old nurse in Miami on a video of herself running alongside a group of about two dozen joggers down a beachside street.

It’s not just a meme, though. When Howard arrived at her first IRL meet-up, she was blown away that there were, by her estimation, at least 300 people there. She joked that the huge crowd was essentially “a visual representation of how single people are in New York.”

“It was just a little bit overwhelming, but it’s really indicative of just how badly people want to meet,” she says.

Howard had attended Lunge Run Club, a weekly meetup that went mega viral on social media over the summer for explicitly pairing running with matchmaking (one video of the club, pulled from TikTok, has nearly 10 million views on just X, the platform formerly known as Twitter). The club started in May and was founded by Lunge, a year-old dating app that aims to pair singles with potential mates who attend the same gyms.

The singles run club was the brainchild of Lunge’s founder, Steve Cole, and Rachael Lansing, a NYC-based fitness coach. The two met through a mutual industry connection and dreamed up a weekly meet-up where singles could chat with one another in a casual, fitness-based environment. They added a few twists on a traditional club: encouraging those hoping to find a date to wear black to telegraph their availability, and leading the group to a bar after the jog, where everyone can mingle (and sparks will hopefully continue to fly).

Cole, a former college athlete, came up with the idea for his app after noticing how frustrated his generation was with the state of dating online and feeling like there needed to be a way to make in-person connections more easily. The Lunge Run Club, to him, is the best of both worlds. It takes the pressure off by creating an environment where it is clear who is looking for love (avoiding, he says, the weirdness of hitting on someone who may be taken) while not making dating the sole purpose of the event.

“I think there needs to be some comfortable space where it’s okay to put yourself out there and be a little more intentional,” he tells me.

Both Cole and Lansing were shocked, though, by just how fast their idea took off. Since May, it has racked up more than 25,000 followers on Instagram, and Howard tells me that the run she attended had more than 1,000 RSVPs. Like Howard, Lansing attributes its growth to just how much modern dating sucks.

“It took off a lot quicker than we expected, but I think we always knew that this was a community that New York City was craving and was missing and that we would see that reflected in our numbers eventually,” she says, adding that it even worked for her. Lansing met her now-boyfriend at one of the runs.

But while Lunge Run Club is probably the most viral iteration of this trend, run clubs for love is a national phenomenon. Angioletti says she organically started going to free fitness events hoping to meet someone after realizing that trying to find a match at a bar or a club didn’t make a lot of sense for her because going out isn’t something she likes to do on her own (and she also hates the apps).

“I made the decision to just focus my energy on doing the things I love and enjoy and hopefully I will meet my person along the way,” she tells me. “Since I love fitness I thought going to a run club would be a unique way to meet someone that also shares my passion for fitness.”

She agrees that singles these days are ready to think outside the box.

“I think a lot of people like myself are burnt out from trying to date the ‘conventional’ way,” she says. “Run clubs have turned dating into almost like a casual, social event.”

It’s something a lot of people seem to be craving. On social media, run clubs for love are popping up everywhere, and Lunge is now expanding its run clubs to other cities like Dallas and Philadelphia. And even run clubs who were founded for an entirely different purpose (you know, running) have felt the impact. A spokesperson for Lululemon, which operates more than 60 recurring run clubs across North America, says they have seen an uptick in signups for their clubs over the past six months.

“We’ve seen an increase in real-life experiences, like run clubs, where you can easily meet like-minded people, build community, and make connections based on a shared passion,” Kara Schlosser, Lululemon’s vice president of the North America community, tells me. “Also, run clubs are a great social activity because you can really participate at any level.”

Schlosser’s point may explain why running, among all the hobbies one could feasibly use to try and find a match, is becoming so popular. Running has a low barrier to entry (you really just need shoes), it doesn’t take any real technical skill like learning to play Pickleball, for example, and most people have done it at least once in their life.

All these factors combined have made this a trend that has grown incredibly quickly. Soon after love-based run clubs began to go viral online, joggers and other observers soon began to post other videos of hordes of sneaker-clad singles thundering down city sidewalks. In fact, the genesis for this story was a Saturday where I headed out for my typical long run and had to dodge, no joke, like 10 separate run clubs taking up the entire path. To their credit though, one of them did give me a free Popsicle.

Howard, who posts a lot of videos on TikTok about her dating life in the city, had seen those same videos before she attended Lunge Run Club, and her curiosity on whether they were legit and if they were inclusive for people of color were among the reasons she decided to attend. She says that while she as a woman of color felt welcome and comfortable and thinks that, overall, the idea is a good one, the sheer popularity of the event ultimately hurt its efficacy. After their run, Howard and the friends she had arrived with tried to go into the bar, but it was so packed with other runners they couldn’t even get inside. Since then, she’s seen the RSVPs only increase, so she has decided to try other meet-ups instead.

Still, she thinks it’s a good thing that singles have more options beyond just the apps.

“We’re all just tired of social media,” she says. “We were tired of dating apps, tired of the same conversations and stories and the same prompts. I feel like I can guess the prompt before I swipe on the next profile. I can probably guess what it will say.”

While Angioletti is still on the hunt for a love connection, she says putting herself out there has had a huge impact on her life.

“I decided to post my run club video to show people that there are fun ways to meet new people outside of the apps, whether you are looking to make friends or trying to find a potential partner,” she says. “I haven’t had any luck yet with the dating aspect but have met and made many new friends this way that share similar interests as me.”

Howard agrees. She’s sure that trying new things is the best way to find the long-term relationship she is hoping for, and encourages other singles to do the same.

“I find that dating in any major city can be a challenge and can be really tiring and frustrating,” she says, “but realistically, you are not going to meet your future spouse sitting at home.”