About Us - Couch Potato Run Club

ABOUT US

WE BUILT THE RUN CLUB WE COULDN’T FIND.

Most run clubs are built for people who already run. We built the opposite – the club for people who hate running, and the people those clubs leave at the back. This is why we bother.

LET’S BE HONEST

IF YOU’RE ON OUR SITE, THAT MEANS THAT MOST RUN CLUBS WEREN’T BUILT FOR YOU.

Most clubs set the pace by the fast ones, print “all paces welcome” on the banner, and near the back there’s a person going purple, apologising, wondering why they came.

We built the opposite. Couch Potato Run Club exists for the people every other club leaves behind – the beginners, the returners, the “I haven’t done anything since school” crowd, the ones convinced they’re too unfit to belong anywhere with the word “run” in the name. We took the single thing that stops most people from ever starting – The fear of being the slow one – and designed it out of existence.

Nobody gets left behind, ever. Someone stays with you the entire time, every session, whatever your pace. It’s not a slogan on a shirt – it’s our founding promise.

HOW IT STARTED

A GAP WHERE A RUN CLUB SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

Couch Potato Run Club started in May 2024, in Tokai, Cape Town – but really it started with a problem we couldn’t solve any other way.

If you wanted to start running from scratch, your options were rubbish. Gyms built for people who were already fit. Run clubs that raced off and left the “slow” ones behind. And couch to 5km plans you were meant to grind through completely alone – until the day you quietly stopped, like most people do.

So we built the thing that should have already existed. It began as one small group, run-walking around the neighbourhood, held together by a single promise: nobody gets left behind. No one out in front to feel slow against.

Turns out a lot of people needed exactly that. One group became a few. A few became more than thirty across South Africa, and over 5,000 people who were once completely sure they couldn’t.

The training’s got better. The locations have multiplied. Next, we’re taking it to the UK. But the promise at the centre of it hasn’t changed since that first run, and it never will.

FOUNDER & DIRECTOR

HI I’M DANI.

I started Couch Potato Run Club because the thing I needed didn’t exist.

When I wanted to start running, there was nowhere to go that didn’t feel intimidating.

I started running in September 2023. I almost didn’t. I had no motivation, no consistency, and I was in a really hard place mentally. I didn’t want a gym, and I had no one to run with. So for a long time, I just didn’t.

When I finally started, running gave me my life back. I don’t say that for effect – It’s the truest thing I know. I’m properly happy now. I’m confident, I’m ambitious, and I feel like myself again. Running did that.

CPRC is the thing I wish I’d had. A real place to start, where no one’s too slow, no one gets left behind, and you’re never doing it on your own. My promise is simple: show up, keep showing up, and you’ll finish this programme. And you might even fall for it. And it might just change your life the way it changed mine.

Since that first run I’ve finished a few marathons and ultras – the furthest being 78km on trail in December 2025 – and I’m an ASICS FrontRunner. Not to show off. Just so you know the person who built this still runs alot, still gets nervous before a race, and started exactly where you’re standing right now.

OUR TEAM

THE HUMANS BEHIND OUR CLUB.

A community this size doesn’t run itself. Behind the scenes, a small team keeps everything working – the WhatsApp groups, the messages, the hundreds of little things you’d only notice if they stopped. These are the humans who make Couch Potato Run Club feel like Couch Potato Run Club.

Tammy

Marketing & Administrative Assistant

Officially, Tammy is our Marketing and Administrative Assistant. Unofficially, she’s the person who keeps the whole thing from completely falling over. She’s behind the WhatsApp groups that get sorted, the messages that get answered, the sign ups that don’t slip through the cracks, and about a hundred small things you’ll never see but would absolutely notice if they stopped. If your first week at CPRC feels smooth and welcoming and weirdly sorted – that’s usually Tammy, working away in the background.

But the admin is only half of it. Tammy is, for the record, one of the most passionate, bubbly, kind-hearted humans we’ve ever met – the kind of person who makes a nervous first-timer feel like a regular within about four seconds. She genuinely lights up when someone finishes their first 5K, and she takes the “nobody left behind” promise as personally as anyone here. A lot of why CPRC feels warm before you’ve even arrived is just… Tammy.