we didn't invent the idea of running with your friends. we just gave it a scoreboard.
battle of the run clubs is a monthly competition where squads of five runners compete for most miles and most vert. it's free, it syncs with strava, and season 1 starts august 1. build a club, connect your account, and every mile you log counts toward your squad's total. when the month closes, the top mileage club and the top vert club take the podium, and both win gear packages from our brand partners.
here's how it works. each month is one competition. august tracks two things: total miles and total vert. that's it. no pace requirements, no minimum distances, no qualifying standards. a club is five runners max, and your club score is your five runners combined. the 50-mile-a-week person and the 15-mile-a-week person both move the needle. standings update through the month, so you always know where your squad sits and exactly how far back the club you're hunting is.
we're not the first people to figure out that a little friendly competition keeps people running. the burrito league turned casual club rivalries into one of the best things in american running culture, proof that the stakes don't need to be olympic to matter. they need to be shared. run clubs everywhere have their own versions: the standing wednesday workout nobody wants to be the one to skip, the strava kudos economy, the friend who screenshots your paces. competition at this scale isn't about winning. it's about having a reason.
wet bandits take on boston.
that's the part we care about. a scoreboard with your friends' names on it will drag you out the door on a day the weather says no. we wrote about this in our origin story: the whole reason syndicate exists is that two decades after a high school running camp, we're still chasing freedom on foot and people to share it with. battle of the run clubs is that second half, built into a product. the competition is the excuse. the community is the point.
the preseason has been running quietly all summer while we tuned the machine, and right now the crown is split: mg academy, the coaching crew out of fishers, owns the mileage board while a seattle club is running away with the vert. what we don't have yet is a rivalry. no villain, no dynasty, no club that everyone else is hunting. that's the open invitation. somebody's squad is going to own season 1, and every club that joins gets a target on someone. we'd love for it to be yours.
mg academy picking up hardware.
a few things botrc isn't. it isn't a race, nobody's checking your pace. it isn't a training plan, we're not coaching you (though if you want that, mark's crew at mg academy is literally on the leaderboard). and it isn't segregated by speed. a club of new runners competes on the same board as a club with a 2:28 marathoner on it, and on vert, the new runners might win. the mountain doesn't care about your pr.
season 1 prizes: top mileage club and top vert club each take a gear package from our brand partners. if you've read our profile of speedland, you know the kind of brands we run with. details dropping soon.
joining takes about two minutes. head to syndicaterunning.com/battle, connect your strava, and start a club or join one. our strava club is the clubhouse for announcements and trash talk, but the battle itself lives on the site. season 1 starts august 1. bring your people.