No Name No Tour: Running community built around racing and performance

For the faster and ambitious runners in Barcelona city, with irregular meet-ups and above all a different format of organising races, No Name No Tour is the right team to join. “What attracts us most in the sport, is the competition.”

We enjoy training hard, feeling uncomfortable, finding out where the limit is and, sometimes, pushing a little beyond it. That’s what Carolina Pinheiro, one of the co-founder of No Name No Tour says. “We liked the sense of community around social runs, meeting people, sharing kilometres and all that, but we never really felt that it was our place. That’s how No Name No Tour was born: a community built around racing, performance and endurance culture, without losing the human side that gives all of this meaning.”

No Name No Tour is particularly drawn to unsanctioned races, both as participants and organisers. “These are races held outside the official circuit, without the traditional sporting structure, but above all they are events that challenge what many people think a race “should” be: medals, finish arches, spectators and all the standard elements,” according to the second co-founder, Bruno Lopes.

“It’s not so much about being anti-rules, but rather about questioning that format and returning to the basics.”

Pinheiro continues: “In April, we organised a race in Portugal called Rocky Soup, which attracted participants from different parts of the world. It’s a long course (80 km), raced in teams of two runners and one bicycle, and it’s quite demanding. What matters is how each team moves, endures and manages the race from start to finish. And, of course, there’s a party at the end.”

Lopes adds: “We take running very seriously, but ourselves much less so. Once we organised a race where the winners didn’t receive the prizes; instead, we raffled them among all participants. Some people didn’t understand it very well, which we loved.”

The three people behind No Name No Tour also come from creative backgrounds (design, video and communications), and that strongly influences how we do things. The founders try to build their own identity and avoid repeating the same formulas that appear again and again.

“We don’t have a closed community or a formal structure,” comments Pinheiro. “Rather than building a club, we try to create an ecosystem where people, brands and projects that share our vision of endurance can come together.”

“We don’t organise weekly meetups, we don’t want to be for everyone and we’re not interested in growing for the sake of growing. If a run club is the place you go to run, No Name No Tour is more of an excuse to end up involved in an absurd race somewhere unexpected.”