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Around my 10th birthday, my dad suggested that we train for a one-mile race in our small Washington, D.C. suburb. It was a “turkey trot,” the classic American fun-run phenomenon that takes place in many cities after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Until then, I’d been your average active kid, dabbling in soccer and going on hikes with the family. Therefore, it was somewhat of a shock to all of us to discover that I was actually pretty quick on my feet. I placed among the top three girls. Motivated by this small win, I began to run daily in the neighborhood and later, in high school and university, I joined the cross-country and track teams. I loved running. It made me feel free and fast.

In spring 2018, I moved to Gyumri to volunteer for one year with Birthright Armenia. I’ll never forget my first morning run in the city’s northern Ani district. The initial big shock was the altitude— I had gone from training at sea level to nearly 1,600 meters above sea level. But even more shocking was that I didn’t see other women running. In fact, I hardly saw any runners at all. I quickly learned that not only was running as a female highly uncommon, but, likely because of its rarity, it attracted negative attention. I was catcalled and followed and worse. To be honest, I’ve heard horror stories from a lot of my expat female friends, especially those in the regions. But things are changing.

Casual running culture began to catch on in the capital, Yerevan roughly 12 years ago. A community of Russian Armenians organized the Armenian Charity Runners Team in 2014. Their first small event, a race to raise funds for a local nonprofit, attracted between 300 and 400 runners. TriClub Yerevan, a community for triathlon enthusiasts, was established the same year with only four people. By 2016, the group had grown to over 100 members. But even then, city runners were still a rare sight to behold.

Ivan Biryukov moved from Russia to Armenia in 2017. After relocating, he started looking for a running community where he could meet locals and connect with people who shared his interests. Almost immediately, he found TriClub. “Only later did I realize it was literally the only amateur running and triathlon community in Yerevan, and in all of Armenia at the time,” he recalls.

During Biryukov’s first year in Yerevan, he and other TriClub members would run in the Hrazdan gorge at 7 a.m. Occasionally, they would pass the odd taxi driver enjoying a morning coffee and cigarette at that early hour. “Whenever we ran past, they would shout ‘Hello, hello!’ in English, assuming we were foreign tourists,” says Biryukov. “The ironic part was that I was usually the only foreigner in the group, everyone else was a local Armenian! It showed how alien the concept was: people simply couldn’t imagine that locals would voluntarily wake up early on a Sunday morning just to go for a run.”

For some Armenians, however, running was not something they discovered until much later in life. Pianist Liana Harutyunyan, who grew up in Armenia, but spent many of her adult years in Lebanon, was a fast and active kid like I was. But because there was no culture of running, and no encouragement from her parents, she never pursued it as a sport. Decades later, during the pandemic, she became friends with a runner in Beirut. At the age of 39, she tried running for the first time. Since then, Harutyunyan has become one of our best female runners in Armenia. She’s run seven marathons in multiple countries and nearly always places first in our local events. Can you imagine if she’d started training at age 10?

Fast-forward to 2026 and the running landscape looks very different. Armenia now has nearly ten running clubs catering to different interests, from the Founders Running Club to Run & Brunch. Some are even backed by major athletic brands like Nike and Puma. The vast majority are based in Yerevan, but the growth is striking: half of these clubs have opened in just the past year alone.

So what changed? There is no single explanation. The growth of running has coincided with geopolitical events, a growing interest in health and fitness, the appeal of community, and the influence of social media.

One of the biggest catalysts has been the growth of organized races. The Yerevan Marathon, held each autumn for more than a decade, remains Armenia’s best-known running event. Anna Sharoyan, one of the race’s founding team members, says the idea grew out of the founders’ own experience as amateur runners. “None of us were professional athletes, we all started running as adults,” she explains. “As we became more involved in running, we also started traveling to take part in races in different countries.”

Eventually, it hit them: why couldn’t they organize a race in their own home country?

“Our first [half marathon] event in 2015 had around 1,500 participants, which was a very strong start for a completely new running event in Armenia,” Sharoyan recalls. By 2018, the event had expanded to include an internationally certified full marathon, attracting runners from other countries as well. By 2025, more than 2,000 runners took part in the weekend’s races, which offered different distances and drew everyone from casual runners to more serious athletes.

What began as a single race had become a fixture on Armenia’s running calendar, and a gateway for more people to discover the sport.

“An event like a marathon gradually changes the perception of running,” Sharoyan says. “People see the atmosphere, the T-shirts, the medals… suddenly, running looks fun and social rather than strange.”

That’s exactly what happened for 26-year-old Arthur Balabekyan. While volunteering at the marathon in 2016, he was drawn to the groups of friends running together. Years later, he found himself part of that community. I met him on a Saturday morning at Run & Brunch, a running club founded in late 2025 that brings people together around running and socializing. The turnout was impressive: dozens of people had gathered early on a Saturday, mostly young local professionals, but also families, diasporans and expats.

For Run & Brunch founders Gor Matevosyan and Yana Hovhannisyan, building a community around running was central to their vision. Matevosyan, who grew up in Vanadzor, had hated the mandatory running test he was made to do at school. Years later, after moving to Moscow, he encountered a more established culture of fitness and outdoor activity. He began running, and discovered that he actually enjoyed it.

After moving back to Armenia, Matevosyan was eager to build a social circle and keep up his running. Together with Hovhannisyan, he created a club that, as he jokes, put the “run” in “brunch.” The pair worked hard to make running feel fun and inviting, using creative, often viral Instagram content to attract people. It worked. They also brought technology into the mix through an app that awards coins for participation, lets members suggest meet-ups and creates incentives for a healthy lifestyle through partnerships with well-known brands like Adidas and local cafes.

Many members of the club don’t identify as “runners.” They are average people looking to live a healthy lifestyle, start their weekends off strong and make new friends.

That emphasis on making running social is showing up in other events, too. Pavel Sargsyan, organizer of Tricolor Run, a series of races in honor of Armenia’s symbols and national holidays, added slow-paced, high-energy “beat runs” for the first time in 2026. The highlight? A DJ truck that travels in front of the crowd of participants, turning it into a sort of active-lifestyle clubbing event. It makes jogging totally accessible to newbies and ridiculously fun to boot.

Serge Shagal, who leads Armenia’s Nike Run Club and serves as a community ambassador, moved to Armenia in 2022, a year that would become something of an inflection point for the country’s running culture.

Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, thousands of Russians poured into Armenia. Many established themselves in Yerevan and its suburbs, and over time spread out to Gyumri, Vanadzor and Dilijan as well. Among them were people who brought with them an established culture of recreational running and running clubs.

But running offered more than exercise. “This sudden transition created significant stress,” says Biryukov, “and for many, running communities served as vital therapy, offering emotional support alongside physical fitness.”

Yerevan Run was among the running communities that emerged in the wake of this migration.

I’d seen the group at races like the Vineyard Trail Run and the Yerevan Marathon, easily recognizable by their branded club flag, but I didn’t realize how large the community was until I joined their Telegram group. It has more than 2,000 members, a mix of Russian expats and locals and organizes not only runs but also meet-ups, hikes and training throughout the week. On September 5, the group celebrated its 200th “HamiliRun,” a weekly 5-kilometer run at the Tsitsernakaberd Armenian Genocide Memorial-Complex and modeled after the volunteer-organized “ParkRun” that originated in the UK in 2004 and has since spread to many countries.

Hailing from Moscow, where running culture is well established, Shagal has enjoyed watching the scene grow in Armenia. One small but telling change he has noticed is what runners wear. “People are consciously choosing equipment made for running,” he says, not necessarily expensive gear, but clothing and equipment designed specifically for the sport. “To me, that is another small sign that the culture is becoming more mature. It is moving from ‘I’m curious, maybe I’ll try this once’ toward people actually identifying as runners and making running part of their lives.”

In 2022, Biryukov moved from Yerevan to Vanadzor. Finding running partners was more difficult outside the capital, so he decided to build a community himself. Trileti Running Club held its first formal gathering in January 2023. Russians joined enthusiastically, while local Armenians were slower to participate. But Biryukov wanted to challenge the idea that amateur sports were something only outsiders pursued. “That shift is happening step by step,” he says. “Today, we regularly have group runs where all the participants are local Armenians, which is deeply rewarding.”

That growth beyond Yerevan is particularly exciting to me. I had often wondered why so many of Armenia’s races were concentrated in the capital, and why trail running, in particular, had not taken greater advantage of the country’s forests and mountains.

There is reason to be hopeful about both the number of running events in Armenia and their growing geographical reach. Back in 2018, there were just three annual races: the Yerevan Spring Run, the Vineyard Trail Run, a fan favorite held in Rind village in Armenia’s wine country, and the Yerevan Marathon. By the end of 2026, my count is at least 16. Even more exciting, half of them are taking place in the regions.

Some of these races are wonderfully unconventional. In July, Yell Extreme Park in Yenokavan hosted the new “Run and Fly,” combining running with ziplining. My personal favorite, however, was the Open Skyrunning Championship, organized by the Armenian Mountain Guides Association, which takes runners up Mount Teghenis with an 800-meter elevation gain.

This year, Vanadzor hosted its second annual half-marathon, highlighting another dimension of Armenia’s growing race culture: charity. The race was organized in memory of Vahe Meliksetyan, an avid runner who was killed in the 2020 war. His brother, Sargis, established a foundation in his name to promote Vahe’s beloved field of clinical pharmacy and began running himself. This year’s race raised 4 million AMD for the Vahe Meliksetyan Foundation, while also helping put Vanadzor on the map as a destination for running tourism.

Other races are beginning to do the same in Armenia’s regions. Dilijan’s natural landscape, proximity to Yerevan and extensive network of trails make it particularly well suited to trail running. When Anton Grisko and his wife, Paola, moved to Armenia in 2022, they saw an opportunity to turn that potential into an event.

Dilijan Run, which includes Armenia’s first trail marathon alongside shorter races through Dilijan National Park, was launched in October 2025 and attracted nearly 300 runners. This year’s race, scheduled for October 11, is expected to draw around 800 participants, roughly half from Russia. The Griskos have been promoting the event there, as well as Armenia more broadly, as a destination for running.

And now, a long-held dream of mine has come true: Gyumri has joined the movement.

On September 20, we held the city’s first-ever 10-kilometer race, a charity run for my own beloved cause of funding physiotherapy for children with physical disabilities. After befriending Sargsyan, the founder of the Tricolor Run series, I suggested that we bring the annual Independence Day run from Yerevan to Gyumri. I was overjoyed by his enthusiasm! Over 240 runners signed up for the 5- and 10-kilometer races. Over 90 children, including those who benefit from the physiotherapy programs, participated in the youth runs.

I got very emotional seeing so many people taking part in the race in Gyumri, including little girls like my ten-year-old self, running their first ever race and maybe, just maybe, falling in love with the sport.

Shagal believes that, when it comes to the development of running culture in Armenia, “we are living through a very special moment right now.” After watching that culture grow from a handful of runners in Yerevan to clubs and races across the country, I couldn’t agree more.

The best part is that we get to shape what comes next.

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