Enthusiasm for fitness and sports has been on the rise lately in Egypt, with initiatives focusing on mixing exercise with fun, and including activities that suits all ages and fitness levels.
The Cairo Runners group has been one of the earliest pioneers of this approach. They describe their vision as building stepping stones for a running community in Egypt, where runners of all age take to the streets of Cairo early in the morning away from pollution and before traffic hazards, thus encouraging people to lead a healthier lifestyle and have fun at the same time.
Although the weekly runs had been associated with the brisk early hours of the Friday mornings, a new change is about to take place.
Besides the regular biweekly runs on Friday mornings which now attract more than 3,000 people, Cairo Runners is planning to establish "neighbourhood runs".
Managed by Mustafa Abdel-Azim, an athlete and a runner, these runs will take place on weekdays at 7pm, and will consist of small groups of joggers running routes in different parts of Cairo.
"We realised that not everyone is an early bird and can make it to our 7am Friday runs, nor a fan of large running groups, so we decided to run after work and after school, enabling all our runners to join us and make use of our runs," Engi Hassaan from Cairo Runners, told Ahram Online.
To join the runs, joggers should go to a link on the group's Facebook page and register for a group within a specific area of Cairo, depending on where they live or where they would like to regularly run.
The maximum numbers of runners that can register for each area is fifty, which keeps crowds smaller and the runs safer, say organisers.
The runs will take place on Sunday through Thursday each week, with each day reserved for one of the neighbourhoods.
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