There is a market of 1.2 billion people who run once a week and have a smartphone. Yet few run regularly.

We saw an opportunity to create a product that goes beyond existing entertainment apps runners use to stay motivated (music, podcasts - all designed for passive consumption, neither personalized nor interactive).

As all of us were put into lockdown in 2020, the WHO advised people to go out and run to help cope with stress and anxiety. It became the perfect moment to take a leap and launch this platform that integrates fitness, audio and entertainment.

After all, running helps reduce the risk of cardiovascular diseases by 45% (WHO).

Running Stories is a first-of-its-kind entertainment platform created to motivate couch potatoes to go running, and casual runners to run more often. Simply by ‘enter-training’ them.

It mixes storytelling, fitness and audio into one customized audio experience that casts you as the protagonist of the story by using real-time data. It’s the ultimate personalized adventure or rom-com or thriller.

All plot points in the story are triggered as runners pass GPS markers, such as landmarks, shops, streets and buildings, incorporating them into the story. As well as using other live data points like date, time and weather.

The result is an augmented audio narrative that integrates with your surroundings making them fully immersive.

Stories are based on distance, not on time (episodes range from 1km to 2km),

motivating runners to head out again and again. Plots are designed to train you by asking you to sprint or change pace.

We use every day data such as your surroundings, weather, date and time to completely transform an audio story into a fully immersive experience. What you hear is suddenly also what you see.

We call these instances Magic Moments when you, as the protagonist of an story, suddenly sees buildings referenced in the plot that you’re running through (all the while thinking a crime lord is about to shoot you in the head, or similar)

So far these data points are curated for bespoke story experiences. The next level of development sees a more modular approach where the same story can be run in multiple locations by swapping landmarks based on your location. The final stage will be an on-the-fly-storycreation that can be run anywhere at any time.

We launched Running Stories in October 2020 as an open beta on the app store. Subsequently we PRed it through consumer media, tech blogs and forums.

The first story that could be run is called The Extraction, and is about a secret agent’s worst nightmare: a crime lord whom he/she has stolen from is always 2 steps ahead. The runner has to coordinate with two members of his team to avoid detection and solve the case. Episode 1 is a cat and mouse game/run where you as the protagonist have to run to an extraction point without getting killed. But things won’t go down that easily.

The app controls the story through a CMS backend that pushes hyper-localised custom audio tracks each time runners pass curated GPS markers along the running route.

It also pulls information from open APIs to incorporate weather, date and time into the story.

Running Stories has been covered by top international news and technology press, such as BBC, Mashable, GQ, Esquire, and also gotten positive reviews from top professionals in the tech industry.

We received interest from runners and running clubs globally - from London to Iowa, Oman to Paris. We are currently developing concepts for big international brands in sports, entertainment and technology that have expressed interest in collaborating and investing (see confidential info).

In the upcoming 6 months, we’re building a smarter app by integrating more APIs to pull live data, and developing text-to-voice tech - powered by AI - to make it simpler for content creators to generate runnable stories for any route anywhere.

We are planning for ‘multiplayer stories’, where runners play different characters and can interact with one another within the same story, and integration into wearable tech. These demonstrate the endless possibilities of this never-seen-before product.