Kilomètre Zéro Running Club

That’s the name of our —my girlfriend and I— new running club in Geneva, Switzerland. Here, I want to take you on a fun journey of dissecting this name, in reverse, and give you a glimpse of what to expect of this run club. Club, Running, Zero, Kilometre —let’s go!

Club!

For us, the purpose of a club is to have fun by connecting with people. How you do that varies. One example, is a night club, which as you know is a place you go to during the night to have fun by dancing and having a couple of drinks with people. In our club, the main activity isn’t dancing and singing but running with people.

The foundation of a club are its people and the connections and relationships they have with each other. It’s what our club is built around and after joining it for a few runs you will be guaranteed to have made new friends or other meaningful connections. Maybe you will even fall in love, who knows.

Running!

You might think that running is quite a strange or even boring activity for connecting with people, but from experience I can say that it’s not. Its magic lies in its simplicity, almost everyone can run, everywhere. A little bit like a night club, everyone can dance, everywhere. On top of its inclusivity and accessibility it’s the most honest way to experience yourself and the physical world. And in an honest environment you are more likely to create honest and meaningful connections.

Let’s not forget that running is also healthy. You are very likely to walk away from a run feeling better than you were before. Even if the effect is not immediate, over the long run, you will feel healthier and be healthier.

Zero!

The story of zero is very intriguing. To start off, the number zero is a human invention. It hasn’t always been around. Since then, it has literally changed the world by allowing us to build most of what has shaped modern life. This includes our best theories in physics, our financial system and economic theories, and computer algorithms.

Zero has also stirred up our perception of reality and truth. This is because contained within zero are two ideas that used to be and still are scary to some people: the void —nothingness— and the infinite —everything. I still find myself getting a strange feeling when thinking about nothingness after death. I bet so do you.

In zero lies the idea that everything comes from nothing. How can everything come from nothing? The best answer we got is that it just does. This is the magical property of zero. Take the Big Bang for example, out of the void, out of nothing came an explosion that gave birth to the universe. It was born in zero. The beginning originates in zero.

Zero is so powerful that in its presence the laws of physics as we know them don’t apply anymore. Zero is where the mathematical equations that describe our universe stop making sense. In other words, when zero shows up, everything could happen and things become unpredictable. The familiar rules and explanations apply no more. We are confronted with the void and the infinite.

In my eyes, zero is a call for exploration, which I find fun, while also being a call for reflection, hard work, and care, to make sense of the new and the unpredictable.

Kilometre!

It’s an indication of the type of running we are doing. We run kilometres. In the leisure running world in which we find ourselves in, everything is counted in kilometres. Strava, Garmin, 5k, 10K, 21K, 42k, 100k, 160k. They all talk to you in the language of kilometres. Even runners talk to each other in the language of kilometres.

Kilomètre Zéro Running Club!

It’s the place where meaningful connections form through fun and the most primitive activity of human beings: putting one foot in front of the other, more or less quickly. It’s also the place where amazing and unexpected things emerge from *almost* nothing —zero— from the simple idea of coming together and running together. At Kilomètre Zéro Running Club we will be exploring the world, ourselves, and each other. We will give life to a whole new infinity, that has the potential to become everything we want it to be.

We hope to see all of you at one of our runs, very soon. In the meantime, you can follow us on Instagram and enjoy the video below.