Steveston Run Crew Building the Most Welcoming Club in Richmond BC

A Rebrand Built on a Promise

There is a specific kind of courage involved in showing up to a group run for the first time, not knowing the pace, the route, or whether you will be able to keep up. Most running clubs ask you to figure that out on your own. Steveston Run Crew decided to eliminate that fear entirely. The crew's identity, its routes, its structure, and its culture were all designed around one commitment: that nobody gets left behind. The story begins earlier than the current name suggests. In 2016, Paul co-founded a small running group in Richmond, BC, in partnership with lululemon. It was called iRunRichmond, and it started humbly, with a handful of people gathering for track workouts around the city. Dean, one of the co-founders, was involved from the beginning but found his work schedule made it difficult to attend most sessions consistently. lululemon backed the effort with events, gear, and support, and through that partnership, Rachel joined the crew. A certified run coach with a talent for organization and a fiercely inclusive approach to people, she became one of the club's core leads and has remained in that role ever since. The group grew steadily. Then, in early 2018, Dean was finally able to show up regularly and quickly moved into a leadership position as Paul began a personal transition that took him away from running the club day to day. What followed was a period of reflection. The crew took stock of what iRunRichmond was and, more importantly, what it had not yet become. The answer to that question would shape everything that came next.

December 2018 and the Decision to Start Over

By December of 2018, the decision was made: relaunch, rebrand, and rebuild with clarity of purpose. The goal was straightforward but ambitious. The crew wanted to become the most welcoming running club in Richmond. Not just friendlier, not just more organized, but structurally and intentionally accessible to anyone who wanted to run, regardless of their fitness level, their experience, or how much running intimidated them. The changes were practical and deliberate. Out-and-back road routes replaced more complex courses, so no runner could ever get turned around or lost. Veterans were paired with newcomers so that first-timers always had someone beside them. The crew committed to no-drop runs, a policy that sounds simple but carries real weight. It meant that faster runners would sometimes turn around, add extra kilometres, and run back through the course to collect anyone who had fallen behind and bring them across the finish together. The front of the pack and the back of the pack were equally the crew's responsibility. The crew did something else that is less common than it should be: they asked their members what they actually wanted. A survey went out, feedback came back, and the leadership listened. The responses shaped programming, events, and the overall feel of the group. The name changed too. iRunRichmond became Steveston Run Crew, rooted now in the specific neighbourhood that had become their home ground and base of operations.

Steveston as Home Ground

The neighbourhood of Steveston sits at the southern tip of Richmond, where the Fraser River meets the open sky and the remnants of a fishing village give the area a character unlike anywhere else in Metro Vancouver. Historic canneries, wooden docks, and a working harbour define the waterfront. The streets are quiet and human-scaled. It is the kind of place where a running crew feels at home, because the neighbourhood itself moves at a pace that invites people to slow down and look around. The crew's home base is the Steveston Hub, a local gathering point that serves as their regular meeting place every Wednesday evening at 6pm. The Hub gives the crew something that many running groups never find: a physical anchor. It is where people arrive before the run, where they return afterwards, and where the community that forms during the kilometres deepens over conversation and time. Having a consistent, central location has proven to be one of the small but meaningful details that makes showing up easier, especially for someone new. Steveston's road network lends itself naturally to the out-and-back format the crew adopted. The flat terrain along the riverfront and through the surrounding streets means that runs are accessible to a wide range of paces without the added variable of significant elevation. For a crew that has made inclusion its organizing principle, the geography cooperates.

Rachel Dean and the Work of Leading with Care

Running crews rise or fall on the quality of the people who lead them, and Steveston Run Crew has been shaped profoundly by Rachel's approach to coaching and community. Her certification as a run coach gives her the technical foundation to guide runners safely, but what the crew points to is her manner: organized without being rigid, encouraging without being performative, and committed to making sure that every person who shows up feels genuinely welcome. Dean's role evolved from occasional participant to active co-leader, and his experience of having been largely absent during the crew's early years perhaps sharpened his understanding of what it means to remove barriers. He knew what it felt like to want to be part of something but have circumstances get in the way. That perspective has informed how the crew thinks about attendance, consistency, and the rhythms of real people's lives. Together, Rachel and Dean carry forward a crew culture that was seeded by Paul's original vision and shaped by the collective feedback of around 50 members who have trusted the crew with their Wednesday evenings. That trust is not taken lightly. The crew's no-drop policy is not just a rule written in a handbook somewhere. It is demonstrated, week after week, by the runners who turn around to find the people still on course.

After the Run the Community Continues

The Wednesday night run is the heartbeat of Steveston Run Crew, but the community does not stop at the finish line. The crew has built out a range of post-run programming that reflects the fact that people run together for reasons that extend beyond fitness. Beers after a Wednesday session. Yoga for recovery. Movie nights that have nothing to do with running at all. These gatherings are the connective tissue between weekly efforts, the spaces where a running acquaintance becomes a genuine friend. The crew secured a small meetup clubhouse, which gives these post-run moments a physical home beyond the Hub itself. Having a place to land after a run, somewhere to stretch out, laugh about the route, and share something to eat or drink, has done as much for the crew's culture as any single policy or programme. It signals that the crew's interest in its members is not conditional on their pace or their athletic output. The lululemon partnership that helped launch the original iRunRichmond chapter has continued to provide a layer of support over the years, from events to gear for runners. It is a relationship that reflects well on both sides, a community crew with genuine values and a brand willing to back the kind of grassroots running culture that does not chase performance metrics first.

An Open Invitation Every Wednesday Evening

Steveston Run Crew gathers every Wednesday at 6pm at the Steveston Hub in Richmond, BC. The run is out and back. The pace is inclusive. A veteran will run beside you if you are new, and nobody will be left on course alone. After the run, there is usually somewhere to be and someone to be there with. The crew has grown to around 50 members since its 2018 relaunch, built not through aggressive recruitment but through word of mouth among people who found something in those Wednesday evenings that they had not expected: a group that meant what it said about welcoming everyone. For anyone who has ever hesitated at the door of a running club, unsure whether they were fast enough or experienced enough or fit enough to belong, Steveston Run Crew was designed with exactly that hesitation in mind. They have been removing that barrier, one out-and-back Wednesday at a time, for years.