SMI x Ciele Athletics x BLANK Training Club

It was a cold, windy Sunday morning in Edinburgh's New Town. However that didn't stop 45 keen runners making it down to SMI for our biggest run club to date.

The run was in collaboration with BLANK Training Club based in the Stockbridge area, a barber shop-turned-run club who have amassed an extremely large following (400+ Strava members) in a very short space of time. This wasn't our first encounter with BLANK however, who we initially collaborated with back in October for the first in our now series of SMI X BLANK events. However this one was no ordinary Sunday morning jaunt. 

Ciele Athletics - giants of the running world - were extremely generous in sponsoring the run ahead of our launch with the brand next Spring (we already couldn't wait for them to drop in-store, this event just made us even more impatient!). Ciele were kind enough to give us 40 FREE caps for the event, which unfortunately wasn't enough for everyone as we underestimated how many runners would actually show. We guessed a solid 30-35 people would show - especially on a gloomy December morning - therefore 40 caps would be more than enough, however that wasn't the case.

The route was a mostly flat, scenic 5K run through the West End, down to Dean Village and back, starting from SMI and ending at... SMI. Two paces were available with one leader for each group, making sure to cater for all abilities. A conversational pace was kept throughout, to keep it as sociable as possible, one of the main reasons for having these events is to meet up, meet some familiar (or new) faces, have a chat & a coffee. And that's exactly what we did.

The event was fuelled by the colossus that is Red Bull, who also sponsored the run and gave out free merch to everyone pre & post run. Post-run coffee & pastries were provided once again by local independent coffee roaster and our talented neighbours - Cobbled Roastery (the best coffee in Edinburgh by the way). 

Looking forward to keeping these runs going in collaboration with BLANK, we have already secured a couple of big sponsors for 2025 through the amazing community of brands we have here at SMI, all will be revealed soon. 

Until next time....

Photography by Will Richardson