RUNNING

BY BEN KAPLAN PHOTOGRAPHY BY SIMON ROBERTS FOR SIMONRPHOTO

Charlie Dark—DJ, poet, youth organizer—is my hero. With his message of inclusiveness, beats and empowerment, he’s made running cool and spread love from his homebase in London to Paris, Copenhagen, Toronto, Vancouver, L.A. and Berlin. Dark, awarded the Power of Light award from former British Prime Minister Theresa May, replaces inner-city chaos with inner-city pride, and his Run Dem Crew is now followed across the world. “If the average man in the street realized the power and potential within them, the world would be a different place,” Dark told me, and his mantra is: “Leave your ego at home.”

For sixteen years, he’s brought running to hard-to-reach places and says the pandemic has only brought more people into our sport. “Running is a superpower that lives inside your body,” says Dark.

Ben Kaplan: How do you start to run?

Charlie Dark: Go outside, take your phone and walk. Take pictures for a month. Do that and your body gets comfortable. Then run for a bit. Just a bit. Then walk. Mix it up; eventually, the walking gets shorter and the running gets longer. You run.

BK: Do you wear a watch or measure your speed and distance?

CD: I measure emotion. How does going outside make you feel? Outside is an exciting place. Outside is where you need to be. We spend too much time inside. I run to flip the way people think.

BK: What do you mean?

CD: Like running is a sign of weakness, something you do in fear. You run away when you’ve done something bad. But let’s reframe it: running is positive, empowering—it brings connection and exploration. We have kids in Bridge the Gap who’ve never been out of their city and we take them to New York for the marathon. There are dreams happening on our runs.

BK: How does running make you feel?

CD: Strong, empowered, liberated. It makes me feel alive and gives me purpose. It also helps keep my head.

BK: How do you find peace on a run?

CD: It teaches you to be present.

BK: You sound like a weed smoker.

CD: Lots of runners smoke weed.

BK: Explain again why anyone can run.

CD: Don’t look at running through the lens of time or distance, but the lens of emotion. It’s about how it makes you feel and the lessons you learn about yourself when you’re out running. That’s how I started my crew. I thought about who I wanted to share that emotion with and what impact I hoped it would have in the world.

BK: Like therapy.

CD: Like meditation.

CD: I reached a point in my life when I needed something and I didn’t know what it was and running was an easy exercise that didn’t require a team, going to a gym or special equipment. It was easily accessible, but I never expected all this.

BK: All what?

CD: Everything changing. I remember running my first ten kilometres in my neighbourhood and feeling elated like I’d reached a landmark, like I conquered something, and from there it didn’t take long to realize that what I found through running I could apply to the rest of my life.

BK: How so?

CD: Breaking large things down into small, manageable chunks.

BK: How did you start?