ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club Chasing Performance and Connection in Lyon

A Call to Effort in the Heart of Lyon

There is something deliberately confrontational about the name. ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club does not whisper encouragement. It shouts it. The double imperative, borrowed from the language of French sport and stadium stands, sets the tone for everything this Lyon-based crew does: no half measures, no idle jogging, no mistaking comfort for progress. When Florent, an outdoor lover and trail runner from Lyon, founded the club in January 2021, he was not looking to fill a calendar with social runs. He was looking to build something more demanding and more honest: a small, tight community where performance and human connection would reinforce each other, not compete for space. The timing was unusual, a January launch in the shadow of a pandemic winter, but then the ambition behind ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club was never especially conventional.

The Idea Behind the Club

The founding premise of ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club is clear and deliberately uncommon: create powerful human experiences through performance in running and trail running. Most clubs position themselves around accessibility, and there is nothing wrong with that. But Florent's vision was shaped by something different, a conviction that the most meaningful experiences on foot happen when people are genuinely pushing themselves and doing so alongside others who are doing the same. Individual commitment, the crew believes, does not diminish collective energy. It amplifies it. When every person in the group turns up with real intention, the whole session rises. That idea, simple as it sounds, is the structural logic behind everything the club does, from its membership model to its Tuesday evening workouts at La Madone.

Small by Design, Serious by Nature

ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club is a members-only club with around fifteen runners in its ranks. That number is not a limitation. It is a choice. Keeping the group small means that everyone knows everyone, that accountability is built into every session, and that the collective identity of the club does not dissolve into anonymity. Members pay an annual membership fee in exchange for a training kit and a competition jersey, as well as invitations to private races and events throughout the year. The kit matters because it creates a visible, shared identity on the road and on the trail. The private events matter because they extend the crew's life beyond Tuesday evenings and into the broader landscape of competitive running. Membership here is not a transaction. It is an entry into a community with standards.

Tuesday at La Madone

The heartbeat of ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club is a weekly tempo workout that takes place every Tuesday at 18:30. The meeting point is La Madone, a spot in Lyon that carries its own particular weight for runners in the city. The session is not a casual jog or a social shuffle. It is a structured, medium-distance effort run at tempo pace, the kind of training that builds real fitness and demands real focus. There is something clarifying about a Tuesday evening workout. The week is not yet over, the weekend is not yet in sight, and the only thing that matters is the effort in front of you. For the members of ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club, that clarity is part of the appeal. The run is the anchor. Everything else, the camaraderie, the shared progress, the collective identity, grows around it.

Lyon as a Running City

Lyon is an underappreciated running city. Situated at the confluence of the Rhône and the Saône, it offers riverbanks, hills, and a variety of urban and semi-rural terrain within easy reach of its neighborhoods. The Croix-Rousse plateau, the banks of the Rhône, the trails around the Monts du Lyonnais to the west: the city and its surroundings give runners a range of surfaces and gradients that reward both road runners and trail enthusiasts. For a crew like ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club, which straddles both disciplines, that geography is a genuine asset. It means that the transition from a Tuesday evening tempo on tarmac to a trail session in the surrounding hills is entirely natural. The city does not push runners in one direction. It opens possibilities.

Trail Running in the DNA

Florent's own background as a trail runner is embedded in the club's identity. ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club does not treat trail running as a niche interest or an occasional adventure. It sits alongside road running as an equal and complementary practice. That dual focus shapes the way the crew thinks about training, about the body's relationship with uneven ground and vertical gain, about the specific kind of focus that trail demands. It also shapes the private events and race invitations that members receive throughout the year, which span both road and trail formats. For a small club, that breadth of focus gives members a genuinely varied competitive and experiential calendar, one that reflects the full range of what running can offer in and around Lyon.

What Membership Actually Means Here

Joining ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club is not the same as signing up to a running app or dropping into a free weekly run. The club is non-profit in structure and serious in spirit. Members make a commitment, financial and personal, and in return they receive a kit that marks them as part of the group, access to a schedule of private races and events, and the less tangible but equally real benefit of belonging to a crew that takes running seriously. The members-only model means that the group remains coherent over time, that faces are familiar and progress is visible, and that the effort one person puts in is noticed and matched by the people running beside them. That reciprocity is rare and worth protecting.

An Invitation to Run Seriously

ALLEZ ALLEZ Running Club can be found and followed on Instagram and on Strava, where the crew's activity tells its own story in splits, routes, and cumulative effort. For runners in Lyon who are drawn to the combination of performance, trail, and a community that asks something of its members, the club represents an honest proposition: come ready to work, and you will find people working alongside you. The name says it all, and it says it twice. That insistence is not accidental. It is the whole point.