Edgy Running Collective Chasing Freedom on the Roads of Pekanbaru

A Crew Born Days Before the Starting Gun

The Bali Marathon has a way of clarifying things. For a small group of runners from Pekanbaru, the prospect of lining up at that race in the summer of 2017 made one thing clear: they needed to do it together, and they needed to do it as something. Not just friends who happened to run, but a crew with a name, an identity, and a shared sense of what running meant to them. Edgy Running Collective came into existence in July 2017, just days before that first race, founded by Ghani, Firmansyah, and Tania. The timing was deliberate in its own spontaneous way. They were not waiting for the perfect moment or the right number of members. They were simply ready to represent something real, and they wanted that something to be present on the start line in Bali. The origin story is worth sitting with, because it says a lot about who these people are. The three founders were not dissatisfied runners looking for a social club. They were runners who had gone looking for an existing crew in Pekanbaru, something that matched their sensibility, their taste, their way of moving through the world, and come up empty. Rather than compromise, they built it themselves. That instinct, to create rather than settle, became the founding spirit of the collective. The word "edgy" in the name is not decorative. It points to a desire to be distinct, to run on one's own terms, and to resist the idea that running crews must look or feel a certain way.

Running as Expression, Not Just Exercise

From the beginning, Edgy Running Collective has been about more than logging kilometres. The founders were explicit about this from the start. They wanted to represent a way of running, yes, but also a way of living. The phrase they return to is freedom of expression. Running, for them, is one of the clearest ways to live that out. Every Saturday and Sunday morning, when the crew assembles in Pekanbaru and sets off into the day, they are doing something that has meaning beyond fitness. The run is a statement. It says something about how they want to spend their time, who they want to be around, and what they believe a life well-lived looks like. This philosophy is not performative. It does not require a manifesto or a branded aesthetic, though the crew has a clear visual identity. It lives in the small decisions: showing up consistently, welcoming people who share the mindset, and refusing to measure the value of a run purely in pace or distance. The collective identifies openly as outdoor enthusiasts, which gives the whole project a particular sense of openness. Running is the anchor, but the orientation is toward being outside, being active, and being present in the physical world. That broader frame makes the crew accessible to people whose relationship with running is still developing, as long as the spirit is right.

The Pekanbaru Streets They Call Their Own

Pekanbaru is the capital of Riau province on the island of Sumatra, a city that has grown rapidly over recent decades and carries the energy of a place still figuring out what it wants to be. For runners, that means a landscape that is sometimes challenging, often warm, and always alive. The equatorial climate means early mornings are not just a preference but a practical necessity. By the time most cities are waking up, Edgy Running Collective is already out, moving through streets that belong to them for those quiet hours before the heat settles in. The crew meets at Dijon Coffee, their home base in Pekanbaru, on both weekend mornings. Saturday runs begin at 6:30 AM, Sunday runs at 7:00 AM. The coffee shop as meeting point is not incidental. It frames the run within a social ritual, a place to gather before and a reason to linger after. Dijon Coffee functions as a kind of unofficial headquarters, the place where the crew is most consistently itself. For anyone passing through Pekanbaru or newly arrived in the city, it is the easiest place to find them.

Fifteen People with Fifteen Different Stories

Around fifteen people make up the Edgy Running Collective today. It is a deliberately small number, the kind of size that allows everyone to know everyone else's name, to notice when someone is missing, to remember that the person running beside you has a life outside of this. The membership reflects a genuine cross-section of urban Pekanbaru: creative directors, photographers, filmmakers, and government employees all run together under the same name. On paper, those backgrounds do not have much in common. In practice, they produce a crew with a remarkably broad perspective on things. What ties them together is not profession or pace but intention. Each person arrived at Edgy Running Collective through a desire to live more healthily and to meet new people through positive activities. That sounds simple, and it is. There is something quietly powerful about a group of people who looked at the demands of their different lives and decided that running together on weekend mornings was worth prioritising. The crew does not ask its members to leave their identities at the door. The creative director brings a creative director's eye. The filmmaker thinks in images. The photographer notices the light. All of that feeds into the collective character of a crew that was built, from the beginning, around expression.

Race Days and the Meaning of Showing Up Together

The Bali Marathon will always be part of how Edgy Running Collective understands itself. It was the destination that gave the founding its urgency, the race that made a name and an identity necessary. But it was also the first proof that the idea worked, that these people could train together, travel together, and stand on a start line together in a way that felt right. Race events have remained part of the crew's calendar, not as the sole purpose of their running but as punctuation marks in the year, moments that give the weekly sessions a larger context. The crew's approach to races mirrors its approach to running generally: it is about participation, about the experience of doing something significant alongside people you trust, and about what the race reveals about your preparation and your character. Winning is not the frame. Showing up well-prepared and present is. That orientation makes race days accessible to everyone in the crew regardless of ability, and it keeps the events meaningful rather than stressful. The Bali Marathon, wherever the crew travels to race next, remains a reference point for what is possible when a small group of people decide to go somewhere together.

Finding the Crew at Dijon Coffee

Edgy Running Collective is not trying to be everywhere at once. Fifteen members, two weekend runs, one home base. That restraint is part of what makes the collective feel grounded. Ghani, who serves as both founder and captain, has helped keep the crew close to its original intentions as it has grown and settled into its routines. The energy of the founding, that sense of building something because nothing quite like it existed, has not dissipated. It shows up in the way the crew presents itself, in the consistency of those Saturday and Sunday mornings, and in the openness with which new people are welcomed when they find their way to Dijon Coffee. Anyone curious about running in Pekanbaru, or looking for a crew that takes the idea of expression and lifestyle seriously alongside the running itself, will find exactly that here. Follow Edgy Running Collective on Instagram at edgy.rc to see what they are up to, when the next run is happening, and where the weekend might take them. Saturday mornings, 6:30 AM. Sunday mornings, 7:00 AM. Dijon Coffee. The crew will be there.