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If you feel like everybody’s running now, you’re not alone. You don’t even need to be spending time outside to notice it, it’s all over our feeds. The Strava summary screenshots, the new running clubs popping up every other day, each themed differently: sometimes to date, sometimes to make friends, sometimes to support a cause. But what we’re truly running towards is a sense of belonging.
Over the past year, there’s been a noticeable increase in people searching for community and third spaces. Especially in places like Dubai, where there’s little time to rejuvenate and reset, and where a sense of isolation can frequently creep in. Google Trends shows that searches for “run club” in the United Arab Emirates were largely dormant for years, until late last year, which marked a sharp surge in interest, signalling the term’s recent entry into the mainstream lifestyle conversation.
Yet, it still feels hard sticking to running as a sport. If you’re doing it on your own, you need to summon the motivation. If you’re doing it with a group, they might not be the right fit. With the abundance of running clubs in Dubai, finding the right one can get tricky. It’s intimidating. All the fit bodies, all the PRs, people pacing a 10k with ease while you’re still on your first panting lap. All the chanting and hollering.
But there’s a club in Dubai that doesn’t do that. Jumeirah Johns Running Club is a no-judgement, no-pressure space where you can literally run to your own rhythm.
Co-founded by longtime friends, Ryan Underwood and Angus Maxfield, what started as a WhatsApp group between four friends has evolved into one of Dubai’s leading running clubs, with over 4,000 members in their database and around 100 people showing up to every run, week after week. The club’s ethos is clear: your run, your rules. It doesn’t matter if you’re a new runner or a seasoned one, whether you want to hang back or join in. It’s a social running club, with Angus describing himself as its “social glue”, and running comes second to what they do.
Aligning perfectly with New Balance’s slogan, “Run Your Way,” the brand tapped into the club on multiple occasions, supporting with merch, kits, and opportunities, and has recently appointed Angus as their Running Communities Manager.
Angus is the opposite of what you’d expect. A former corporate consultant raised in Dubai, he spent most of his life hating running. He only did it for rugby when he played, but after stepping away from the sport following a few too many concussions, dabbling in triathlons, and craving a social, zero-pressure fitness space, he started going on a few casual morning jogs with friends.
We met with Angus to talk about his new community-building role, tips for new runners, and what JJRC truly stands for.
You were described as the “accidental” founder behind Dubai’s leading running club. How accidental was it?
We really didn’t intend to start a run club whatsoever. My whole journey into running wasn’t a traditional one. I didn’t intend to go out and start running myself and kind of found it as a bit of a stress relief from a really busy work life that I was managing at the time.
Me and a few friends were connecting over that. From that, we went out to the beach, started walking and grabbing breakfast and it kind of really quickly became our one solace of the week, a really easy place where we could connect and just breathe in a particularly busy week. Then walking led to running, and running led to inviting a couple more friends to run. All of a sudden, out of this one WhatsApp group that we’d created, this concept of Jumeirah Johns was born. We created a bit of momentum initially, and then thought, ‘Hey, why don’t we give this a try? We can maybe see if there’s some merit in this.’ For the first couple of weeks, it was definitely very embarrassing, and we didn’t know if people were gonna show up.
Fortunately, after a couple of months, we built up quite a strong momentum, and we realised that we were hitting a target that a lot of people in Dubai needed at the time, and people were clinging onto it.
What sets Jumeirah Johns apart from other running clubs in Dubai, which have been proliferating recently?
The running boom is huge at the minute, and what’s great about Dubai is that there’s a club for everyone. What sets us apart is that we’re very authentic. We make fun of ourselves. We recognise that for the most part, we’re not running professionals. We don’t actually take the sport incredibly seriously, despite having loads of great athletes within the club who go out and push PBs and get amazing times. Those same athletes will look at someone who’s never run before or who’s coming down to walk, because we encourage that as well, and treat them with the same respect and the same kind of approach that they would treat anyone, really.
We’ve managed to capture magic in a bottle. This really cool, authentic vibe. It means that everyone’s welcome, everyone’s invited, and we celebrate each and every one of you, whether you’ve never run or you’re just coming down to walk or just coming down for the coffee, or if you’re out there racing sub-three marathons, you’re all the same for us. Because we kind of make fun of ourselves and we’re the butt of the joke and we’re kind of scrappy in the way that we approach most things, I think that people can recognise that. And then hopefully they relate to it.
In places like Dubai, which can often feel isolating, people seek community and a sense of belonging. Do you feel like JJRC is a third space for people?
100%. I mean, I’d honestly say that running is kind of second to what we do. We have a full social calendar outside of running. There are so many different friendship groups which come and blossom.
Dubai is transient, people come and go, and for the short time or long time that they’re here, they are looking for something to be a part of. If that mechanism can encourage people to then get friends and more socialising outside of the Run Club, that’s fantastic. Honestly, that’s what brings me the most joy. We have so many examples of people who come and they’re quite shy, particularly reserved individuals. And then you see them literally a month later being like the life of the party and the vibrant person in that friendship group. People definitely yearn for a sense of belonging. And if Jumeirah Johns can provide that, then that makes me very happy.
We’re definitely yearners. But circling back to communicating authenticity, it’s something I really noticed on your Instagram, and from what I can see, 2025 seemed like a big year for Jumeirah Johns with numerous events and community initiatives. Now that the year has ended, could you share your reflections on 2025 for the club?
If I was to describe it, I’d say controlled chaos. To give you an idea of the setup, it’s a few founders and then we have some volunteers who tirelessly volunteer week in, week out to bring the club to life. They’re really helpful and they’re really grateful because they get supplied in some great New Balance kits. New Balance is fantastic in their support with us. But they’re doing this all from a volunteer perspective. We have some people who are on the social side of things. We have some people who volunteer to actually take and lead the runs.
At the forefront of everything we try to do, we have to think of those who are coming to the club. Their experience is the most important thing. Will they have a good time, meet people and connect while they do it? It was a busy year and I’m very grateful to everyone who volunteered to make that happen to so much more outside of me and my co-founder Ryan. There’s so many people who helped make that happen.
Any advice for those who want to start running?
If you want to start running and you’re coming to a group and you’ve done that in the past, I applaud you because I get how intimidating it can be to go to a group. The whole reason we set up Jumeirah Johns is because I looked at some run clubs to maybe try and join myself, and I found they were either super intimidating and performance-focused, or you had to pay for them.
We try to mitigate that as best as possible but there’s always going to be an element of doing something new. If you’re starting to run in a group, I applaud you. And that’s how I’d recommend doing it, because it’s fun. If it’s in a group that really supports runners and encourages people to run their way, there’ll be an environment where it doesn’t matter how fast or far you’re running, or if you even want to run at all. Because that’s what running should be. People should be going out and running as fast as they want to. And people should walk, run, jog, hop. Take a Careem bike if you get tired. That should be the environment. I would encourage people to run your way and approach it in a very slow manner where you’re not doing too much too early. Because a lot of people are like, ‘New Year’s resolution, I’m gonna go run every day!’ And by day six, you’re tired and you don’t wanna do it anymore. Whereas if you go into it slowly, you’ll find the love that I think a lot of people find in. And also, if it’s not for you, then that’s fair. Find something that works.
We’re super low key, very mellow. Come in, hide at the back if you don’t want to be at the front.
What has this journey taught you about yourself?
It’s taught me a lot. Getting over that fear of embarrassment and that initial fear of judgment, it’s been a big one personally for me. You’re the butt of the joke if it goes wrong, but people celebrate you if it goes right. I got a lot braver through the process. You have to stand up week in, week out in front of 50 to 100 people and tell them what they’re doing and invite them.
My role in the community is to go up and talk to people and make sure that they’re involved and being that kind of social gel. I’m a fairly sociable person, but that’s a very intimidating thing to do, to walk up to newcomers and try and make sure that they’re doing it.
It also teaches you that you never really know what someone’s going through. You get so many people that message the group and they’ll come and talk to you personally and be like, ‘Hey, I really needed this or this really helped me for X, Y, Z reasons.’ You need to give everyone a blank canvas for when you meet them and kind of invite them in and recognise that there might be stuff going on beyond the surface. If we can play a little part in putting a smile on someone’s face, making them happy momentarily before they go back to a job they hate or before they’re going out to some environment they might not like, then I’m happy to play that role.
Speaking of roles, congratulations on joining the New Balance team!
Thank you! I’m really excited. I’m finally doing something that really means something to me. I think we’re going to make a real impact this year with the stuff that we have planned that I can’t disclose just yet.
New Balance always wants to drive the fitness running wellness communities, and that’s what I’m looking forward to doing. I’m pumped. The team’s great. The environment’s great. I really resonate with what the brand is trying to do on a global level. It’s nice to be creative too. I’ve done all this stuff with Jumeirah Johns, whether that’s creating events or driving merch or art directing a photo shoot, none of which I’m an expert at.
How does your running philosophy align with New Balance’s approach?
The whole aim of Jumeirah Johns is to get people into sport, be it running, cycling, whatever. We want to encourage people to approach running in their individualistic pursuit. For some people, that’s running seven days a week, for others that’s running once for 15 minutes. The parallelism is between us trying to get people to do it exactly how they want to do it and New Balance saying “Run Your Way.” There’s a real direct match. It makes complete sense and that’s why we partnered initially with New Balance. New Balance has been with us for over a year now. We made that partnership when there were other brands out there because New Balance made the most sense because they encourage people to run their way. They encourage all types of people to run. It’s not just the super hyper fit people. That really resonates with us because we want to encourage people to get into sport, break down those barriers, make it easy, social, fun. That’s why you keep coming back. It’s not because you hit a four minute per 10 kilometer pace and that’s really inspired you to go on and pursue that. It’s because you had fun and you had a great coffee afterwards and you made a friend and someone made you laugh before you went to work in the morning.
Okay. Now, onto the more important questions. Who’s Johns?
It’s from the WhatsApp group that the JJRC was born out of. You know when you throw a few friends in a WhatsApp group and you don’t know what to call it? We were all meeting in Jumeirah to have breakfast and go for a walk before, and it was four guys. When I created the group, I just called it “Jumeirah Johns”, which is a play on the word “Jumeirah Janes.” It’s kind of a slang, somewhat derogatory term for a housewife, sort of. So it was a play on that. When we started the brand, we got loads of sh*t for it. People were thinking that it’s an exclusive run club, that it was only for guys. In reality, we have more women than men in the club!
Why do you think it is that there are more women than men?
We just had to create an environment that was safe, first and foremost, because we didn’t want it to be intimidating. When we were thinking about how the club is set up and how it works, we would always think back to what is the consumer who’s least likely to come. For example, it might be a woman who doesn’t want to come and be shouted at by men. Then we have to make sure that’s never going to happen, by creating a safe environment and maintaining that vibe. Honestly, it is kind of self-policing at this point. We have really good people inside the club. If, excuse my French, if there’s an asshole in there, we’ll know about it. It self-polices because we want to protect the little bit of magic that we have.
Would you want to close this on a specific memory or moment or story that comes to mind?
We’ve done really cool stuff. We worked with New Balance to create our own race up a seven-story car park called Level 7. We sent the winners of that to the Doha Marathon. We’ve done really cool, amazing activations. But for me, it’s the fact that the club is still growing, and you still have that same core segment of people coming week in, week out, and they’re voluntarily doing this. That’s what blows my mind. It’s that people are opting, in their own personal time, to get up at 5 AM, drive to the beach, and come and do this. I think there’s some merit to what we’re doing. We just want to continue to make people happy, give them an option to exercise and make a smile. And that’s ultimately what we are. We’re Jumeirah Johns.
