Positive Force Running with Heart and Purpose in Lanarkshire

A Crew Born from the Bleakest of Moments

March 2020 was not the easiest time to start anything. The world was contracting, uncertainty was spreading faster than any training plan could prepare you for, and the idea of gathering a group of strangers to run together felt, to most people, like exactly the wrong moment to try something new. For Fraser, the founder of Positive Force, it was precisely the right one. There is something almost defiant about choosing to channel energy outward when everything around you is pulling inward, and that defiance sits at the very heart of what Positive Force is about. The crew was established in Lanarkshire, Scotland, in the first weeks of March 2020, not despite the bleakness of that moment but directly because of it. Fraser looked at the world as it was and decided that what it needed was not another reason to retreat but a reason to lace up, step outside, and move forward together. That impulse, simple and stubborn and generous, became the founding logic of the crew and has shaped everything about it since.

Hardcore Roots and a Running Crew Identity

The name Positive Force is not random, and it is not corporate. Fraser has a deep love of hardcore punk, a genre whose history is inseparable from the idea of the youth crew: tight-knit, values-driven, fiercely communal, and explicitly committed to a way of living that pushes back against the mainstream. The term PMA, or positive mental attitude, runs through the DNA of that scene like a drumbeat, and Fraser wanted to carry it directly into the world of running. The result is a crew that wears its influences openly without being precious about them. There is no gimmick here, no ironic distance, no branded aesthetic deployed for the sake of it. Positive Force borrows the spirit of hardcore punk because that spirit is genuinely useful: it insists on showing up, on holding the line, on building something real with the people around you. Applied to running in Lanarkshire, that means a community where the values are stated plainly and the expectations are honest. You bring respect. You bring yourself. Everything else follows from there.

What Positive Mental Attitude Looks Like on the Road

PMA is one of those phrases that can sound hollow if it is used carelessly, pasted over difficulty rather than engaged with it. Fraser is careful to mean something specific by it. For Positive Force, a positive mental attitude is not the performance of optimism. It is a practice, a way of approaching a run, a conversation, a bad week, a hard kilometre, that prioritises forward motion over stagnation and openness over defensiveness. The crew was designed to be a place where people feel genuinely safe, where runners can show up as themselves without having to justify or explain who they are. Gender, colour, creed: none of it determines your place in Positive Force. What does matter is the willingness to be respectful, to engage honestly, and to share what you want to share without pressure to perform or prove anything. That kind of environment does not build itself. It requires intention and leadership, and Fraser has been clear about both from the very beginning. The philosophy is not a tagline. It is the operating principle.

Lanarkshire as a Home for Something Growing

Lanarkshire sits in the central belt of Scotland, a region shaped by industrial history and bordered by landscapes that shift from the dense urban texture of Greater Glasgow's edges to the wide, often dramatic countryside of the South Lanarkshire hills. It is a place with a strong working-class character, a community culture that runs deep, and a geography that offers real variety to anyone willing to explore it on foot. For a running crew built on the idea of positive energy and genuine human connection, there is something fitting about being rooted here. Lanarkshire does not trade in pretension. It rewards effort and straight talk, and Positive Force reflects those qualities naturally. The crew is still in its early stages, finding its feet in a region that has plenty to offer: river paths, moorland tracks, town routes, and the kind of undulating terrain that makes a run feel earned. As Positive Force grows, the landscape of Lanarkshire will become part of its identity in the same way the punk-inflected philosophy already is.

Still at the Start and Moving with Intent

Positive Force is candid about where it stands. The crew is young, still finding its shape, and has not yet held its first organised group run. That honesty is part of what makes the project credible. Fraser does not oversell what Positive Force is at this moment, because the point is not what it is right now but what it is becoming, and the direction is clear. Plans are in place. The intent is serious. There is a particular kind of energy that exists in a crew at this stage, before the routines are set and the regulars are established, when everything is still possible and the community is being built from scratch by people who genuinely care about getting it right. Positive Force carries that energy and seems determined not to spend it carelessly. The maiden voyage is coming, and when it does, it will be the beginning of something that has been thought about, prepared for, and grounded in values that were decided before a single kilometre was run together.

An Open Invitation to Run and Be Yourself

If you are in Lanarkshire and you have been looking for a crew that does not require you to fit a particular mould, Positive Force is worth your attention. This is not a crew where you need to hit a certain pace or carry a certain look or come from a particular background. The only real requirement is respect: for the other runners, for the space you share, for the honesty that Fraser is trying to build into every aspect of the community. You can follow the crew's journey on Instagram, where updates on upcoming runs and events will be shared as the plans take shape. The crew is growing slowly and deliberately, which means that joining now means being part of building something rather than simply joining something that already exists. For anyone with even a passing familiarity with the ethos of hardcore punk, that distinction will feel significant. For everyone else, it simply means that your voice and your presence will matter from the very first run.