MadOne Crew Running with Madness and Purpose in Hong Kong

A Coach, A Race, A Revelation

There is a specific moment in 2013 that explains why MadOne Crew exists. Simon, a running coach since 2001, was leading a team of runners through a Nike Run Club program in Hong Kong ahead of the Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon. The team had barely trained for three months before race day. By most conventional standards, a personal best was out of reach. And yet, when the finishers crossed the line, every single one of them had clocked their fastest time ever. Simon stood there with a clear thought: this group was capable of something much bigger, and he was not done with them yet. That conviction became the founding act of MadOne Crew in April 2014. Simon did not simply repurpose his coaching methods. He designed a full year-long training program for the runners who had impressed him at the marathon, and he opened the door to a handful of athletes from his earlier running group, InvitedR, welcoming them into the new project. From the very beginning, MadOne Crew was built around the idea that potential is not fixed, and that a well-structured, consistent training environment could unlock performances that even the runners themselves had not yet imagined.

The Name That Carries a Philosophy

The name MadOne Crew is not accidental, and it rewards a second look. It brings together two distinct ideas. "Mad" is a nod to Simon's reputation in Hong Kong's running community, where his demanding coaching style had earned him the informal title of "Madness coach." He wore it with pride, and the name honours that identity openly. But "mad" carries a richer layer still. The crew takes its guiding principle from the Japanese filmmaker Akira Kurosawa, who wrote that in a mad world, only the mad are sane. In a city that rarely stops moving and where rest is sometimes mistaken for weakness, choosing to train seriously, to push harder, to commit to long-term goals, can itself look like a form of madness. MadOne Crew has decided that is exactly the right kind of madness to embrace. "One" balances the intensity of that first word. It speaks to togetherness, to collective effort, to the idea that running with others changes what running means. The combination is deliberate: high standards and genuine community, ambition and belonging, in the same name and in the same training session. That duality is not rhetorical. It shapes how the crew actually operates week in and week out.

Two Nights, Two Sessions, One Standard

MadOne Crew trains twice a week, and the two sessions serve different but complementary purposes. On Monday evenings, members meet at Sham Shui Po Sports Ground at 8:30 pm for interval training, the kind of structured speed work that builds the engine. On Friday evenings, the group gathers at Causeway Bay Sports Ground or Victoria Park, also at 8:30 pm, for long-distance running. The paces covered across both sessions range from 3 minutes 50 seconds to 5 minutes per kilometre, a spread that reflects the genuine range of abilities within the crew while keeping the training purposeful and honest. Victoria Park, one of the crew's regular gathering points, sits at the heart of Causeway Bay, one of Hong Kong's densest and most energetic neighbourhoods. Running there after dark is its own experience. The city does not go quiet, but the park creates a breathing space within it, a stretch of grass and paths where the noise softens and the focus sharpens. It is a fitting stage for a crew that takes its training seriously without taking itself too seriously. The structure of the schedule reflects something important about how MadOne Crew thinks about running. Two sessions a week is not casual, but it is manageable. It asks for commitment without demanding that running consume everything else in a member's life. Simon designed it that way, knowing from more than a decade of coaching that sustainable habits produce better runners than short bursts of overtraining.

The People Who Make It Run

Around 30 members currently train with MadOne Crew, a tight-knit group by any measure. At the centre of it are three captains: Samu, Simon, and Jay. Simon also holds the role of founder, the thread connecting the crew's origin story to its present form. The captain structure distributes leadership across the group rather than concentrating it in a single voice, and that arrangement shapes the culture of the crew. Decisions, directions, and day-to-day energy come from multiple people, which gives MadOne Crew a resilience that single-founder groups sometimes lack. Members describe the crew as a place where lasting friendships form, and that outcome is not incidental. When people train together twice a week with a shared goal, when they push through difficult interval sets on a Monday night and then cover long kilometres together on a Friday, they build the kind of mutual trust that does not stay inside the sports ground. Those relationships carry into the rest of the week, into the rest of life. Simon recognised this dynamic early, and he built the crew's values around it rather than treating it as a side effect. The running is serious; the community is equally so.

Running Hong Kong After Dark

Hong Kong is a city that layers its experiences in ways that reward the curious. For runners, that means a constantly shifting landscape of urban streets, harbour-facing promenades, steep hillside trails, and neighbourhood parks. MadOne Crew operates in the heart of it, with sessions spread across Causeway Bay on Hong Kong Island and Sham Shui Po in Kowloon, two areas with distinct characters. Causeway Bay is dense and cosmopolitan, a retail and residential district pressed tight against the Typhoon Shelter and the park. Sham Shui Po sits further into Kowloon, a working neighbourhood with a long history and a texture that feels different from the polished surfaces of Central or Wan Chai. Choosing to run in both of these areas is, in a quiet way, a statement about how MadOne Crew understands the city. Hong Kong is not one thing. It is a layered place, and training across its different districts gives the crew a relationship with the city that goes beyond the obvious running spots. The sports grounds they use, functional and unpretentious, feel right for a crew that is more interested in the work than the backdrop. Hong Kong's running calendar is also rich. The Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon, the race that effectively gave birth to MadOne Crew, remains one of Asia's most significant running events. The Standard Chartered Hong Kong Marathon draws tens of thousands of participants each year and winds through some of the city's most recognisable corridors. For members of MadOne Crew, it carries a particular weight. It is the race where the crew's founding story began, and for many members it remains a fixture on the annual schedule.

A Crew Built Around Belief

What Simon built in April 2014 was not simply a training group. It was an argument: that runners who are given a serious programme, genuine coaching, and a community of people who care about their progress will do things they did not think were possible. The 2013 marathon team proved the point before the crew even had a name. The year that followed turned the experiment into an institution. MadOne Crew is now entering its second decade, still training twice a week, still gathering in the sports grounds of Causeway Bay and Sham Shui Po, still led by the same founder who had a revelation on a marathon finish line. The crew's roughly 30 members come from different backgrounds and run at different paces, but they share the same two nights a week, the same standard, and the same belief that in a mad world, running together with real intention is one of the sanest things you can do. If that sounds like your kind of madness, MadOne Crew can be found on Instagram, where the crew documents its training, its races, and the community that has grown around both.