Cairo Runners, Egypt's leading running initiative, will celebrate its third anniversary Friday morning with a chocolate-themed run in Zamalek.
The event, a four-kilometer run at seven in the morning starting at Zamalek's prominent cultural space El-Sawy Culturewheel, is fittingly sponsored by Snickers and is Runners' first-ever route in the Cairo suburb.
" We want to start a new year with an energy boost and having lot of fun with Snickers Chocolate! If you are going to sweat, sweat sweetly," Runners said on the Facebook event for the run .
The event is not only celebrating the third anniversary of the initiative, but also its accomplishments in 2015. These include its biggest half-marathon yet, an increased number of runners, various events held for good causes and of course, Runners' trademark weekly runs in Cairo's streets.
Cairo Runners was the first running initiative in Egypt to encourage people to run the streets and not the treadmill when it was founded in late 2012 by Ibrahim Safwat . Safwat's vision was to inspire Cairo's residents to adopt a healthier lifestyle through running their city's streets with other members of their community.
Starting with weekly runs on Friday mornings to avoid traffic and pollution, Runners normalized the sight of joggers in Cairo's streets, one that was practically unheard of on such a scale before, and became Egypt's leading initiative for organized street-runs.
The Runners' community started with a little over 60 runners in its very first run; it now has an average number of 2,500 runners every week.
In addition to the weekly runs in Cairo's neighborhoods, Runners' has organized three half-marathons in Cairo, including the city's first-ever half-marathon in 2013. The annual run has since become a staple athletic and cultural event in Cairo.
Moreover, the initiative has organized numerous events and runs dedicated to raising awareness about local causes and global issues.
In 2015, Runners teamed up with UN Women and UNICEF Egypt for a run to celebrate International Women's Day, it teamed up with local hearing loss awareness initiative Esma3ny for a run to raise awareness and money for the cause of hearing loss in Egypt, and it also organized a run in Luxor to promote tourism.
The "chocolate run" is expected to kick off another great year for Egypt's most popular exercise community, who continues to make running Cairo not just a lifestyle choice but a culture in its own right.