Urban Runners Podgorica Making Running Cool in Montenegro

Two Friends, One City, One Idea

It started the way the best things usually do: two childhood friends, a conversation, and a decision to stop talking and start moving. In November 2017, Luka Jovanović and Denis Kepić, the co-founders and captains of Urban Runners Podgorica, decided to take their friendship out onto the streets of Montenegro's capital. They were not chasing records or training for elite competition. They simply wanted to run around their city, sign up for races across Europe, and see where the road would take them. What grew out of that simple act of showing up together, again and again, became something that Podgorica had not quite seen before: a crew built not on performance, but on personality. Podgorica is a city that does not always get its due in the broader conversation about European running culture. Compact and sun-baked for much of the year, surrounded by rivers, mountains and the kind of landscape that rewards anyone willing to explore on foot, it is a city with real running potential. The streets through the older neighbourhoods, the paths along the Morača river, the open parks near the city centre, all of it offers a varied and engaging backdrop for urban running. Luka and Denis knew their city well. They had grown up there, side by side, and when they decided to make running part of their lives, they did it in the only way that felt natural: together, and out in the open.

Growing a Running Culture From Scratch

From the beginning, the ambition of Urban Runners Podgorica extended beyond the two founders. They wanted to expand their numbers and, just as importantly, raise the profile of running in Podgorica as a whole. In a city where running as a social, crew-based activity was not yet a fixture of everyday life, that took some patience and a willingness to build slowly. They were not recruiting professional athletes. They were looking for people who wanted to move, improve, and enjoy themselves while doing it. People who understood that progress, however modest, is still progress. The crew grew run by run, conversation by conversation, until it settled into a tight community of around twenty members. That number is not large by the standards of some running crews operating in major European capitals, but size was never the point. Urban Runners Podgorica has always been more interested in quality of connection than quantity of membership. There is something deliberately intimate about a group this size. You know everyone's name. You notice when someone is having a hard week. You celebrate when someone knocks a minute off their personal best. The crew functions like an extended friendship group, which makes sense given that friendship is precisely where it began.

No Professionals, All Progress

Luka and Denis have always been clear about one thing: Urban Runners Podgorica is not a professional outfit. You will not find the crew's members fighting for position at the front of a race pack. That is not a limitation they apologise for. It is, in many ways, the whole point. The crew was built on the understanding that running is for everyone who chooses to show up, not just those who arrived with years of structured training behind them. What matters is that you are moving, and that you are moving a little better than you were the day before. That philosophy of incremental improvement is something the crew takes seriously even if they wear it lightly. Progress motivates. Seeing yourself get stronger, faster, more consistent, over weeks and months of regular running, is a powerful thing. It keeps people coming back. It turns a casual interest into a genuine commitment. Within Urban Runners Podgorica, that kind of slow, honest development is something every member can relate to, because they have all lived it from the beginning. Nobody arrived already polished. Everyone grew into their running shoes together, and that shared experience gives the crew a particular warmth and credibility that no amount of elite credentials could manufacture.

Racing Across Europe Together

One of the defining threads running through Urban Runners Podgorica from its earliest days has been the appetite for travel. Luka and Denis did not want to just run in Podgorica. They wanted to take their crew on the road, sign up for events across Europe, and stack up race experiences in different cities with different atmospheres. That goal has shaped the crew's identity in meaningful ways. Urban running crews that chase destination races develop a different kind of cohesion. You spend long weekends together. You navigate unfamiliar cities. You stand on start lines surrounded by thousands of strangers and find comfort in the familiar faces of your crewmates beside you. For a crew of around twenty people from a relatively small city, that kind of international ambition says a great deal. It speaks to an outward-looking mentality, a curiosity about how running culture is lived elsewhere, and a genuine desire to connect with people from different places and backgrounds. The crew's founders have made it clear that one of their central goals is to link up with running crews around the world, to build relationships that stretch beyond borders, and to experience the specific joy of spending time with cool people from different cultures, bound together by the shared language of putting one foot in front of the other.

After the Miles, the Beers

Any honest account of Urban Runners Podgorica has to include the part that happens after the running stops. The crew knows how to celebrate. Good people, good conversations, and a beer or two after a run are as much a part of the Urban Runners Podgorica experience as the kilometres themselves. There is nothing performative about this. Post-run socialising is where running crews actually become communities. It is where the stories get told, where friendships deepen, and where newcomers stop feeling like newcomers. The fact that Luka, Denis and their crew take that part of the equation as seriously as the training is one of the things that makes this group feel genuinely liveable as a community, not just an athletic programme. Podgorica has a lively social scene for those who know where to find it, and a crew that bridges the worlds of sport and social life sits naturally within the city's character. Urban Runners Podgorica has always understood that the best running crews are not purely functional. They are social organisms. They give people a reason to be outside, to be active, and to be together, and then they give them a reason to stick around once the run is done.

Making Running Look Cool

There is a line in the way Urban Runners Podgorica describes itself that is easy to overlook but says everything: they are dedicated to making running look cool. It is a deceptively simple statement. It speaks to aesthetics, yes, but it also speaks to accessibility and attitude. Making running look cool means showing people in Podgorica that running is not some grim, solitary discipline reserved for people in carbon-plated shoes with GPS watches and foam-rolled calves. It is something you can do with your friends, in your city, at your own pace, and enjoy enormously while doing it. That message matters in a place where running culture is still finding its footing. Every time Urban Runners Podgorica heads out through the streets of Podgorica, every time they post about a race weekend abroad, every time they welcome a new member into the group, they are contributing to a slow but real shift in how running is perceived in Montenegro's capital. They are not doing it with grand ambitions or corporate backing. They are doing it with consistency, good humour, and the stubborn conviction of two childhood friends who decided one day that their city deserved a real running crew.

Running With Urban Runners Podgorica

Urban Runners Podgorica does not operate on a fixed public schedule. The weekly running plan is shared through their Instagram page, which is the best place to stay informed about upcoming runs and events. For anyone in Podgorica who wants to get moving, or for visiting runners passing through the city and looking for local company, following the crew on Instagram is the starting point. The crew is small enough that every new face is genuinely noticed, and international runners who make contact ahead of a visit have every reason to expect a warm welcome. The vision Luka and Denis have for Urban Runners Podgorica has always extended beyond city limits. They want to be part of a global network of crews, to run in new places and welcome runners from those same places to Podgorica. If that sounds like a crew worth knowing, it almost certainly is. Find them on Instagram, follow the weekly plan, and show up. From there, the rest tends to take care of itself.