On Monday nights at 7pm in Washington Heights, runners gather outside the Locksmith Bar and set out together. Nobody gets dropped. The slowest runner finishes with the group, the way it has worked since Hector Espinal and Josh Mock started WRU Crew. It is a small scene, up to 100 runners on a good night.
That small scene is part of something huge. On November 1, 2026, the TCS New York City Marathon set a record: 61,146 finishers, the first marathon ever over 60,000, according to New York Road Runners. The biggest race in the world, and the culture feeding it starts on weeknights like this one.
Latino runners built that weeknight culture years before run clubs became a trend. They built the club they wanted to join.
Who built it
Latinos Run came first. Afro-Latina marathoner Maria Solis Belizaire founded it in New York City in 2016, after she could not find a Latino running group of her own. It runs free weekly runs, plus a sister group, Latinas Run, and events like the Dia de los Muertos 5K. A free weekly run that has lasted a decade is the story.
WRU Crew made Washington Heights its home base. Espinal and Mock built it around access and safety for runners of color. Every pace welcome, nobody finishes alone.
Dyckman Run Club, founded in 2019 in Washington Heights and Inwood, turned the same idea into a nonprofit, with a free weekly ‘Cardio Thursday,’ an annual Dyckman 5K, and a 2023 New York Road Runners Team Spirit Award.
Team WEPA NYC has run free in Queens since the summer of 2016. Dominican Runners organizes around Dominican heritage across New York City and New Jersey. And the newer, smaller Latin Run Club runs on a simple ethos: it does not matter how fast or slow you go, because running is just an excuse to hang out with friends.
Different neighborhoods, same playbook: free, no-drop, culture-first, rooted in the block.
What happened next
The hybrid wave landed just as hard. From May 28 to June 7, 2026, HYROX took over Pier 76 for ten days: more than 52,000 athletes, and 30,000 public bibs sold out in under an hour, according to NYU Langone Health, the event’s hospital partner. The next New York edition is already dated: May 27 to June 7, 2027.
That mix of cardio and strength is exactly where the crews already lived. None of that replaced the weeknight runs though. It just proved the weeknight run was the engine all along. The clubs did not ride the trend. The trend caught up to the clubs.
When and where
WRU Crew meets Mondays at 7pm in Washington Heights. Dyckman Run Club runs ‘Cardio Thursday’ in Washington Heights and Inwood. Latinos Run posts weekly runs around the city, and Team WEPA runs in Queens. Schedules change, so check the club’s own page before you go.
What a night looks like: gather, warm up, run or walk at your pace, regroup at the end, grab coffee. That is the whole format. What these clubs do is simple. They turn a solo workout into a weekly meetup, and the meetup into a community.
Why it sticks
You do not stay for the pace. You stay because people notice when you are gone. Miss a Monday and someone texts you. That text beats any training plan.
Your alarm snoozes. The group chat does not.
How to get involved
There is no application. There is no fee. Joining means showing up.
Pick the crew closest to you. Check its page for the current meetup. Go. No membership, no experience required, no special clothes. Nobody checks your mile time at the door.
Bring water. Run or walk at your pace. Stay for the coffee after, because that is where the crew actually happens.
From miles to muscle
The same people who learned to train together are adding the barbell. Crunch Fitness reported strength training had the highest attendance of any group fitness category in 2025, up 36 percent year over year. Runners are lifting, lifters are running, and hybrid events sit in the middle.
For Latino New Yorkers, the weight room is not a new import. Dominican-born Victor Martinez, raised in the Bronx and Washington Heights, won the Arnold Classic in 2007 and finished second at Mr. Olympia the same year. The lineage was already there. The crews just gave it a front door.
Getting stronger runs on a simple rule: progressive overload. Do a little more over time. Bench 135 for 8 reps this month, 140 for 8 next month. Add a rep. Add a set. Small jumps (repeated for months) are what build muscle.
More muscle changes how you look and how you move. Your shirt fits different. Your legs carry you further. That is the way you get a physique you’re proud of.
Strength is also what keeps you doing this for years instead of burning out in one season.
And here’s the thing. Your log does not lie to you the way your memory does. Ask a lifter what they squatted three Tuesdays ago and you get a shrug.
Ask their workout logs and you get an answer.
That’s where LYON XP earns its place. It is a strength-first tracker: log the exercise, sets, reps, and weight, and your history shows whether you are progressing or just showing up.
It also has a cardio section, so you can log the runs too. The Insights tab is free and you get to see all your progress every week in ways the notes app could never do.
The crew was never about running
So what is actually happening in Latino fitness culture in New York? Not a takeover, not a replacement, not a single trend. A community that learned to train together is adding new tools to the same habit. Some will line up at Pier 76 in 2027. Some will find a barbell. Most will keep running with their crew, because the crew was never really about running. It was about belonging.
Start with the crew. Track your progress with an app like LYON XP. It’s free on the App Store, and it will keep your history for you, so you can focus on showing up again next week.
It’s really amazing to see how much influence Latinos have had on NYC running clubs and the culture at large. Let us know your favorite run clubs in the comments below. 🏃🏾🏃🏽♀️🏃🏽♂️