the burrito league, the speed project, and running for the hell of it.
nobody's watching. run anyway.
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running for the hell of it
in january, thousands of runners got out of bed in the
cold and ran the same few hundred meters of pavement over
and over until their legs quit. the prize at the end was a
burrito.
this was the burrito league, and for about a month it was
the only thing anyone we follow could talk about. last
week we called events like western states and hardrock 100
the smallest room in a very big house. the burrito league
is what the rest of the house looks like.
the backstory is short. for two years chipotle and strava
ran a challenge every january: find your city's
segment, run it more times than anyone else, win a year of
free burritos. then chipotle, the brand holding the
burrito budget, walked. there would be no 2026 edition.
jamil coury, an ultrarunner who built aravaipa running and
races like the cocodona 250, decided the thing didn't
actually need chipotle. he drew a short segment on a
stretch of brick sidewalk in tempe, put up a prize, and
posted it. five people showed up at midnight to start. he
called it a party.
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it quickly left the ground of that short stretch of
sidewalk. runners in other cities asked for the rules and
jamil just sent them a segment, a logo, and one line of
advice: you need a short loop, you need a prize,
that's about it. and here's the part we love.
the prizes didn't come from some national marketing
budget. they came from whoever cared. redlands ran its
league for a year of burritos from oscar's, a local
spot that's been feeding that town for decades.
indianapolis partnered with a local running store, drew up
three different segments, and on the final morning stood
out in the cold handing out breakfast burritos to cheer
everyone on. toronto put up coupons from a neighborhood
taqueria. a few running brands chipped in on top, mount to
coast added shoes across a handful of cities, aravaipa
threw in a cocodona 250 entry, and
janji, one of the brands we run in, backed the league out in
bozeman. but mostly it was burritos. by the end of the
month there were more than a hundred local leagues around
the world, and strava said the whole crowd had logged
enough miles to circle the globe seven times.
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here's the part that really got us, and it has almost
nothing to do with beans and cheese. picture the same few
hundred meters of pavement in your town, and a month to
run it as many times as you can. you go out on a tuesday
and someone's already there. you go friday and
it's three people you now sort of know. by week two
you recognize the regulars, you learn who's hunting
the leaderboard and who's just there for the company,
and you catch yourself cheering on the exact person
you're trying to beat. speed doesn't even
matter. the fastest runner in town can get buried by a
stubborn one who simply refused to stop showing up. it
rewards consistency over talent and repetition over
fireworks, and somehow that makes it more addictive, not
less. coury said once you start watching the leaderboard,
'it gets into your soul.' that's a badass
way to turn a boring stretch of sidewalk into the most
alive corner of someone's january.
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the burrito was the excuse. the loop full of people
you'd never have met otherwise was the point.
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and the tell is what happened next. once the community
proved the thing worked, the big names wanted back on.
strava handed out free burritos on the final day. chipotle
quietly gave a year of burritos to winners in a dozen
cities. the challenge they'd walked away from a month
earlier was suddenly worth showing up for again, now that
someone else had built it.
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the whole prize pool, more or less
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no rules, no spectators
the same idea shows up at the other end of the distance
chart, too. a few months after the burrito league, a crowd
lined up at the santa monica pier and ran roughly 340
miles across the mojave to a neon sign on the las vegas
strip. that's the speed project, and it's racing
with the fanfare stripped all the way off. no set course.
teams of up to six trade legs day and night, told only to
avoid the highways and otherwise figure out their own line
across the map. no aid stations, no timing chips, no
finisher medals, and the whole thing runs by a two-word
rule: no rules, no spectators. a german organizer named
nils arend started it in 2013 with five friends and a
hunch, and it grew almost entirely by word of mouth into
one of the most talked-about events in the sport. solo
runners take it on now too, crossing the entire desert in
a handful of sleepless days. one past runner called it
'the Burning Man of races,' which is about
right.
a few hundred meters for a burrito and a few hundred miles
for a neon sign don't have much in common on paper.
but they're the same instinct. neither one looks like
a sanctioned road race, neither one needed a governing
body's blessing, and both of them belong to the
runners instead of to a sponsor. no qualifying time you
have to earn, no start corral, no expo. just a reason to
show up and people to show up with. this is the thing we
kept circling back to last week and can't put down.
running to run. running for whatever it means to you that
morning, whether that's a leaderboard, a taco, a van
full of friends, or nothing at all.
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we say this as people who love a goal race. a big race is
a clarifying thing to point your training at. but the
burrito league and the speed project are a good reminder
that the start line was never the only thing that made us
dig. the fire was never really about the bib. it was about
other people and a good enough excuse. expect more of
these, too. the format is too easy to copy and too fun to
kill, and the barrier to starting one in your town is
basically a whiteboard and some nerve.
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battle of the run clubs
running for people who don't need a lottery.
that crowd, the ones running for the fun of it instead of
the bib, is exactly who we built
battle of the run clubs
for. season one starts august 1 and it runs on the same
rails the burrito league did: strava, where your training
already lives. bring your crew of five, rack up the miles
and the vert, and climb the standings all season. the
competition is just the excuse. the real prize is having a
reason to text your crew and get out the door. the full
rundown and how to join lands in your inbox soon.
and if you're a brand reading this: the burrito
league ran on people putting up prizes, and battle of the
run clubs works the same way. want your gear in front of
run crews all season?
hit reply
and we'll line it up before the gun.
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so this week, go run for no good reason. or a slightly
ridiculous one. either way, bring someone with you and
tell them why.
that's it for this week. if this one landed, forward
it to the friend who'd start a local chapter of
something ridiculous in a heartbeat.
midwest grit meets pacific northwest rain.
come run with us.
graham + mark
syndicate running
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