023RunClub Exploring Chongqing Together One Run at a Time

The City Code That Became a Running Identity

Every city has a number, but not every city turns that number into a running movement. Chongqing's telephone area code is 023, and when Linden founded 023RunClub in November 2014, he chose that code deliberately. It was a statement of belonging, a quiet declaration that this crew was rooted in one of China's most dramatic and underrated cities. Chongqing sits at the confluence of the Yangtze and Jialing rivers, a mountainous megacity of layered streets, fog-wrapped skylines, and a pace of life that defies easy description. To name a running crew after its area code was to say: we are from here, we run here, and we are proud of it. A decade on, that founding instinct has shaped everything about how 023RunClub operates, from the routes it chooses to the values it carries out onto the road every week. Linden came to the idea not as a casual jogger but as a committed endurance athlete. He had already competed in marathons across multiple countries by the time he began thinking seriously about what a running community in Chongqing could look like. His vision was specific. He wanted to bring together people who shared a genuine interest in sport, people who might not yet know each other but who, given the right structure and the right atmosphere, would quickly find common ground. Chongqing is a city of tens of millions, and yet meaningful community can be hard to find in a place that large. Running, Linden understood, had a particular power to solve that problem. It creates a shared rhythm, a shared effort, and almost inevitably, shared conversation.

Safety as a Founding Principle

What distinguishes Linden's approach from the very beginning is a commitment to runner safety that goes well beyond the ordinary. He holds certification as a director tutor with the American Heart Association, is trained as a TCCC tactical first aider, and is also a certified WMAI international field medical first aider. These are not credentials accumulated for their own sake. Every time 023RunClub heads out for a run, Linden brings first aid supplies and an automated external defibrillator with him. In a crew of around 400 members, with runners of varying ages, fitness levels, and medical histories, that preparation matters enormously. It means that every person who laces up with 023RunClub can do so knowing that someone on that run is genuinely equipped to respond if something goes wrong. That level of care is rare in any running community, anywhere in the world. It also signals something important about the crew's underlying philosophy. 023RunClub is not built around performance metrics or competitive pressure. Linden never framed the crew as a training group chasing personal bests. The emphasis has always been on taking running seriously as a practice, understanding it as something worth doing well and doing safely, while keeping the atmosphere open enough that newcomers never feel intimidated. The combination of professional safety preparation and a relaxed, community-first culture is not a contradiction. It is the clearest possible expression of what it means to genuinely care about the people who run with you.

Two Routes, Two Rhythms, One Crew

The weekly structure of 023RunClub reflects the geography and spirit of Chongqing itself. On Wednesday evenings, runners gather at 7:30pm at Center Park, a meeting point that suits the working week, offering a way to decompress mid-week and move through the city as the lights come on and the evening crowd begins to fill the streets. There is a particular energy to running in a Chinese city after dark, when the neon reflections hit the pavement and the temperature drops to something more forgiving than the midday heat. Center Park provides a natural gathering point, easy to find, well-known across the city, and located close enough to Chongqing's commercial heart that runners coming straight from work can arrive without drama. Saturday mornings shift the experience entirely. The crew meets at 7:00am on Binjiang Road, the riverside route that follows the bank of the Yangtze. Running along Binjiang Road in the early morning is one of those experiences that stays with you. The river is wide and slow-moving at that hour, the city is still waking up, and the combination of water, mist, and mountain backdrop that Chongqing is famous for creates a setting that few urban running routes anywhere can match. These two weekly runs are not interchangeable. They serve different moods, different schedules, and different corners of the city. Together, they give 023RunClub members a genuine sense of Chongqing's variety, its energy by night and its quiet beauty at dawn.

Chongqing as Running Terrain

To understand 023RunClub, it helps to understand the city it calls home. Chongqing is sometimes called the Mountain City, and the name is entirely earned. Unlike the flat grids of many Chinese metropolises, Chongqing is built across hills and river valleys, with roads that climb sharply, bridges that span enormous drops, and neighbourhoods stacked vertically in ways that confuse and delight visitors in equal measure. Running here is never monotonous. The terrain demands attention, rewards curiosity, and offers a constant stream of unexpected views. Ancient temples sit alongside glass towers. Cable cars cross the Yangtze. Night markets fill narrow lanes carved into hillsides. The city is also one of China's four municipalities directly under the central government, a designation that speaks to its political and economic importance, but which tells you nothing about what it actually feels like to be there. Chongqing runs on its own logic, shaped by its rivers, its mountains, and its famously assertive food culture. The hotpot here is a civic institution, eaten at all hours, and the social rituals around the table are as much a part of local life as any landmark or festival. For 023RunClub, the city is not just a backdrop. It is the subject matter. The crew exists to move through Chongqing with attention, to know its streets intimately, and to discover what it reveals to those willing to cover it on foot.

A Community Built Over a Decade

Since its founding in November 2014, 023RunClub has grown to around 400 members, a number that represents years of quiet, consistent effort. Running crews do not reach that size through marketing campaigns or viral moments. They grow the way all durable communities grow: one person at a time, one run at a time, one conversation on a riverside road at seven in the morning. The crew's home base at the Chongqing International Trade Center provides a stable anchor in the commercial heart of the city, a place associated not with athletic exclusivity but with the everyday rhythms of urban life. The members of 023RunClub come from different backgrounds, different industries, and different corners of a city that is itself vast and varied. What draws them together is not a shared pace or a shared race schedule. It is a shared understanding that running is more interesting when you do it alongside other people, in a place you are genuinely trying to know better. Over ten years, that understanding has produced friendships, habits, and a collective familiarity with Chongqing's streets that no map could replicate. The crew has watched the city change around it, new bridges appearing, neighbourhoods transforming, the riverside route evolving, and it has kept showing up, twice a week, to see what comes next.

Lacing Up with 023RunClub

Anyone interested in joining 023RunClub will find the entry point straightforward. Wednesday evenings at Center Park from 7:30pm, Saturday mornings on Binjiang Road from 7:00am. No qualifying time, no required gear, no expectation beyond a willingness to move through one of China's most compelling cities in the company of people who have been doing exactly that for the better part of a decade. The crew's Instagram is the most direct way to stay current on upcoming runs and any changes to the schedule. What you will find when you arrive is a crew that takes the running seriously, takes the safety seriously, and takes the community seriously, without ever losing sight of the reason anyone goes out for a run in the first place. Chongqing is a city worth knowing. 023RunClub is one of the best ways to begin.