Gin and Running Mixing Miles and Cocktails in Lausanne Switzerland

When Two Passions Refuse to Stay Separate

There is a moment, somewhere between the last kilometre of a city run and the first sip of a cold gin and tonic, where effort and pleasure blur into something that feels entirely earned. That is the moment Gin and Running was built around. Based in Lausanne, Switzerland, this crew started from a conviction as simple as it is honest: that loving to run and loving gin are not incompatible interests. They are, in fact, a perfect pairing. Sport and alcohol do not get along very well, as the crew will be the first to acknowledge. But that admission is precisely the point. Gin and Running does not pretend the combination is virtuous. It just argues, with some persuasion, that you can hold both things at once, and enjoy the tension between them. Lausanne is a city built on hills above Lake Léman, compact and layered, where every run offers a different elevation, a different view, a different neighbourhood to pass through. The streets wind and climb, the lake shimmers below, and the city's creative, slightly unconventional character provides exactly the kind of backdrop a crew like this needs. There is something fitting about a running group with a bar component taking root here, in a city that balances Swiss precision with a vivid cultural scene and a genuine appetite for experience.

The Lab Is Where the Magic Happens

The flagship event of Gin and Running is called The Lab, and the name earns its weight. Once a month, the crew gathers for a 5K run through the streets of Lausanne, covering the kind of urban distance that feels accessible without being trivial. The route moves through the city, past its textures and rhythms, before arriving at Le Comptoir bar, where the second half of the evening begins. What follows is a workshop dedicated to the art of gin and tonic cocktails. The secrets of botanicals, the logic of tonic water pairings, the importance of ice and glassware and garnish, all of it gets explored with genuine curiosity. This is not a token drink handed over after a race. It is a structured, engaging deep dive into a craft that happens to follow a run. The two halves of the evening inform each other. You have moved your body through the city. Now you slow down, use your senses differently, and learn something. The Lab is genuinely educational in a way that makes it feel generous rather than gimmicky.

A Race Born in a Growing Neighbourhood

Gin and Running has not confined itself to monthly meetups. The crew has shown consistent ambition in building events that belong to Lausanne's landscape. The Run Sévelin is one of them, a small race set in the Sévelin neighbourhood, a part of the city that has been transforming for years, accumulating studios, ateliers, creative businesses and a particular energy that comes with a place still becoming itself. By planting a race in Sévelin, Gin and Running connected their running identity to the lived geography of the city, to a neighbourhood in motion. The race is small in scale but meaningful in intent. It is the kind of event that gives a local street a moment of celebration, that makes residents look out their windows and feel something is happening on their block.

Going the Full Distance Around Lake Léman

If Run Sévelin is intimate, the Epic City Relay sits at the opposite end of the ambition spectrum. The ECR, as it is known to those who have taken it on, involves running the full perimeter of Lake Léman in relay. Lake Léman is not a small body of water. Shared between Switzerland and France, it stretches for roughly 73 kilometres along its southern shore alone. Running the full tour in relay is an undertaking that requires coordination, commitment, and the kind of collective will that only a crew with genuine bonds can sustain. It is physical and logistical all at once. The Epic City Relay signals something important about Gin and Running's character: this is not a crew that treats running as purely incidental to the social occasion. The miles are real, the challenge is real, and the gin at the end is all the more deserved for it.

What Comes Next on the Track

The crew is not standing still. A brand new relay race on track in Lausanne is already in development, adding another event to a calendar that grows with intention rather than haste. Each new format reflects the same underlying logic: create a reason to run together, make the run genuinely worthwhile, and then reward the effort with something that honours it. A track relay carries a different energy from an urban 5K or a lake circumnavigation. It is faster, more focused, more raw in its athleticism. The fact that Gin and Running is moving into that territory suggests a crew that is curious about the full range of what running can be, not committed to a single format or identity.

Run Responsibly and Reward Yourself

The crew closes every communication with the same phrase: run responsibly. It is a line that does two things at once. On the surface, it nods gently at the obvious irony of a running crew organised around gin. Beneath that, it carries a real philosophy. Running responsibly means listening to your body, knowing your limits, not treating the run as something to get through so the drink can begin. The drink is the reward, not the goal. The run is the thing. Gin and Running has thought carefully about this balance, and that care shows in how they structure The Lab, in how they build events that are genuinely athletic, and in how they speak about what they do. The crew's motto is also a kind of permission: you earned this, go ahead and enjoy it.

A Crew That Belongs to Lausanne

What Gin and Running has built in Lausanne is something specific to its city. The format works here because Lausanne has the geography for good urban running, the bar culture to support the social half, and a population curious enough to show up for something that defies easy categorisation. The crew is not trying to be everything to everyone. It is offering a particular evening, once a month, that requires you to run five kilometres and then sit at a bar and learn about cocktails. That specificity is its strength. People know exactly what they are getting, and they keep coming back. For anyone who has ever finished a run and thought that what would make this truly perfect is a very cold, very well-made gin and tonic, Gin and Running in Lausanne would like a word.