Despite the profusion of coaches, instructors and running experts, running is a simple, intuitive activity that does not require the mediation of these exegetes. Nor does it require any apparatus, including sneakers with a four-figure price tag.
The race does not require anything else: tests, challenges and, here is a word that gives me goosebumps, goals. However, and this is not surprising, it is precisely the different circuits of tests and challenges that are growing in numbers.
In search of differentiation (and, perhaps, a justification for a more expensive registration), organizers are testing other formats. Providing new experiences for runners is key, which is why running, for example, in airports, on runways that were once exclusive to airplanes, has become a hit.
The business is not new, in Brazil it has been going on since before the pandemic, but it gained octane this year when Motiva, formerly CCR, concessionaire of several terminals across Brazil, increased its circuit.
In 2025 there were eight tests at airports such as Pampulha, in Belo Horizonte, Palmas, in Tocantins, and Joinville, in Santa Catarina. The last one, in which I participated as a guest, was in the early hours of this Sunday (30) at Afonso Pena airport, in the metropolitan region of Curitiba. Other concessionaires also promote their events, such as GRU Airport, in Cumbica.
At Afonso Pena, there were two circuits, 5 km and 10 km. Motiva announced the presence of around 4,000 runners, and the crowd was really big, even more so when you take into account that the daily movement of the terminal is 15 thousand people, but they never arrive there at the same time.
Runners with a certain obsession with breaking personal records would rejoice at the flatness of the circuit and the 16 or 17 degrees of ambient temperature, enough for me to frantically seek shelter in the tents in the concentration area in the dead hours before the start.
But it was really the unusual environment – and perhaps the full-bodied kit for the event, which is part of the Track & Field competition circuit, perhaps the most “premium” of the major national circuits – that attracted attention. The couple Amanda Conque and Andrey Farah, both from São José dos Pinhais, the city where the airport is located, decided to return to Afonso Pena even though they had been away from running events for some time. “This year we really opted for the gym,” said Amanda, who, unlike the columnist, seemed very comfortable with the local temperature.
One wonders what Motiva’s main motivation is in setting up these races, something that clearly does not bring “ROI” (return on investment) and requires expertise different from that used in the ordinary maintenance of airline operations.
“Community engagement” and “brand strengthening” are the main reasons, as Ana Eliza Figueiredo, executive manager of People and Communication at Motiva, told the column, who also highlights the positive effect among the company’s own workers and the “networking opportunities with strategic partners, such as large brands with regional appeal”.
In any case, running in airports seems to have paid off, and the project, at least at Motiva, continues. There always has to be an audience: adapting an old saying that is much more cynical, no one has ever lost money by overestimating their interest in the extravagant.
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