Running with Rhyme and Peace Finding Joy on Jakarta Streets

A Circle of Friends, a City to Run Through

There is a particular kind of quiet that settles over Jakarta just before a run begins. Not silence, exactly, because Jakarta is never truly silent, but a momentary pause before the group finds its stride, before conversation loosens, before the city starts to feel manageable again. That pause, and everything that follows it, is what Running with Rhyme and Peace was built around. The crew began in August 2023 not as an organisation with a mission statement, but as something far simpler: a group of friends who needed to move, to breathe, and to escape the weight of urban routine together. The name itself carries that intention. Rhyme and peace. A rhythm found in motion, and a calm earned through it. What started among a tight-knit group of people who already knew and trusted each other gradually revealed its own appetite to grow. By January 2024, the founders made the decision to open Running with Rhyme and Peace to the public, shifting from a private circle to something more expansive. New faces arrived. Some stayed. The atmosphere that had made the early runs feel easy and unguarded turned out to be durable enough to survive the transition from intimate group to open community. That is not something every crew manages. Many lose their original character as numbers grow. Running with Rhyme and Peace held onto its warmth.

Rooted at Kopi Api, Cikini

Since March 2024, the crew has been headquartered at Kopi Api Coffee Roasters in Cikini, one of Jakarta's more characterful neighbourhoods, carrying layers of colonial-era architecture, creative energy, and a quieter pace than the city's commercial corridors. Kopi Api is not just a logistical gathering point. It is the kind of place that shapes a crew's identity by association. A coffee roaster with a serious approach to what it serves tends to attract people who are equally serious about what they bring into their lives, including the community they choose to run with. The pairing of a thoughtful coffee space and a running crew grounded in genuine human connection feels natural here. Kaleb Sitompul and Weasten Sibuea are the founders who set this whole thing in motion. They built a space where showing up mattered more than performance, where the run was a reason to gather rather than a competitive end in itself. Holding the operational thread together is Yordan Andro, the crew's captain, who keeps the rhythm consistent week after week. Together, these three form the backbone of a community that now counts around 30 members, each one drawn in by the same promise: that running here should feel good, and that belonging here should feel easy.

Two Runs, Two Versions of Jakarta

Running with Rhyme and Peace offers two regular sessions each week, and they could not be more different in feel. Thursday nights begin at 7pm, right at Kopi Api Coffee Roasters in Cikini. The city is still awake, lights are on, the streets carry their weekday energy, and the crew moves through it all at an easy pace over a shorter distance. There is something specific about running at night in a city the size of Jakarta. The scale of the place becomes more intimate after dark. Familiar streets feel slightly reimagined. The heat of the day has softened. Conversation comes easier when you are not squinting into the sun, and the group settles into a collective rhythm that makes the kilometres disappear. Sunday mornings are a different proposition entirely. The meeting point shifts to Gelora Bung Karno, the iconic main stadium complex in the heart of Jakarta, a landmark that carries decades of Indonesian sporting history and public life. The session starts at 5am, which means showing up before the city has fully woken up. The air is cooler, the roads quieter, and the horizon carries that particular quality of early light that makes effort feel worthwhile. The distance is a medium one, and the pace remains easy throughout. There is no urgency here, no pressure to prove anything. Just a group of people choosing to begin their Sunday by moving together in one of the most recognisable open spaces in the country.

Running as Happiness, Not Performance

The philosophy woven through Running with Rhyme and Peace is stated without apology: running is happiness. Shared energy. A reason to show up not because you have a race to train for, but because movement alongside people you trust does something for you that sitting still simply cannot. This framing matters because it sets the tone for everyone who walks up for the first time. There is no implicit hierarchy between the fast and the slow, no expectation that you arrive with a training plan or a watch full of data. The easy pace is a commitment, a deliberate choice that keeps the crew together and keeps the experience accessible. This approach also means that Running with Rhyme and Peace functions as a genuinely safe and inclusive space, something the founders have been explicit about prioritising since the early days. Jakarta is a sprawling metropolis, and finding corners of it that feel genuinely welcoming, where you do not have to perform or explain yourself to belong, takes effort to create and consistency to maintain. The crew's open membership policy reinforces this: there are no fees, no applications, no barriers. You show up, you run, and the rest follows naturally.

What Cikini Adds to the Story

Neighbourhoods shape crews in ways that are hard to articulate but easy to feel. Cikini, where Kopi Api sits and where the Thursday night runs originate, is not one of Jakarta's flashier districts. It does not announce itself with gleaming towers or mall-anchored energy. Instead, it offers tree-lined streets, older buildings with genuine character, and a community of residents and regulars who have been there long enough to know what the area actually is. Running through Cikini at night means encountering the city at a more human scale. The streets are sized for people, not just traffic. There are corners worth noticing, textures worth remembering. For a crew built on the idea of reconnecting with the city and with each other, Cikini turns out to be an ideal base. The neighbourhood encourages the kind of attention that running at an easy pace makes possible. When you are not chasing a time, you notice more. You see the way the light falls across an old facade, or the way the air changes when you pass a food stall still open at 8pm. Running with Rhyme and Peace was designed to make room for exactly that kind of awareness, and Cikini, without trying particularly hard, makes it easy to arrive there.

An Open Invitation to the Streets of Jakarta

Joining Running with Rhyme and Peace requires very little. There are no membership fees, no prior running experience required, and no pace minimum to meet. The crew is open to everyone, and that word is meant sincerely. Whether you are a longtime Jakarta resident looking for a new reason to get outside, or someone who has just arrived in the city and wants to find their footing alongside people who know it well, the door is open. The Strava club is a good place to follow along and stay connected with the crew's activity. Thursday at 7pm at Kopi Api, Sunday at 5am at Gelora Bung Karno. Two sessions, two distinct experiences of one of Southeast Asia's great cities, and a community built on the quiet conviction that moving together, without pressure, without performance, is one of the better things you can do with your time.