WHEN AVA TANKERSLEY, ’25, LANDED IN SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA, in February 2024 for her semester abroad, she knew no one. Tankersley, an intrinsically social person, yearned for human connection, but not the type she would find during the late hours of Sydney’s party scene. Rather, she wanted the type that would inspire her to challenge herself and get outside of her comfort zone. So she leaned on her passion for fitness.
“If I can make my friends through my hobbies,” Tankersley said, “then I have a much greater chance of making lifelong friends.” Her hobbies mostly revolve around rigorous exercise. Her favorite place and time to work out are outside and whenever the sun sits low on the horizon. She joined local run clubs, making a habit of waking up early to run with others along Australia’s eastern coastline.
Social running was a welcome change. Back in Richmond, before she studied abroad, she was used to working out alone because she struggled to find people who wanted to run in the early morning hours. “No one was ever there,” she said. “I wished I had people to experience it with, but no one ever wanted to wake up [to run] with me.”
In Sydney, it was the opposite. Many people there wake up at 5 a.m. for hard-core exercise. She fit right into its fitness community.
“I wake up super early, and I’m working out for two-plus hours a day,” she said. “It’s just what I love, and people in Australia, that’s just what they do. It’s their lifestyle.”
Even better, her early morning runs in Sydney were followed by dips in the Pacific Ocean and time on busy beaches being social. Not only was she improving her personal fitness, but she was also forming meaningful relationships in her new city. Even the time she spent commuting via public transportation to the run clubs on Sydney’s coastline paid off because the friends she met up with on those mornings became her community.
This story makes sense to Rachel Turk, a psychologist with UR’s Counseling and Psychological Services. She said that exercising with others has unique benefits that go beyond physical fitness. Group settings, specifically in exercise, help build confidence and support for forming deep relationships that can extend beyond the exercise setting. Especially during a tough workout, getting through it together can help ease the awkwardness of talking to new people.
“If you are spending your entire runs — and even the time you’re spending socially afterwards — talking about all sorts of different things, you’re filling a lot of time,” Turk said. “That allows you the opportunity to talk about life in a less pressured environment.” When all else fails or anxiety about talking to someone new creeps in, there is already a baseline topic that the two have in common. Whether you run without talking or chat it up, you are connecting with the other person through your shared interest.
After Tankersley’s initial connections turned into a wholesome friend group, she started thinking about forming a run club of her own. She wanted it to be about more than running. She also wanted a social club that revolved around the rising and setting sun. When one of her fellow runners mentioned starting another club, they joined forces and launched the Sunrise Social Club.
“We did runs and ice baths, and we’d go to coffee shops and have barbecues and picnics,” Tankersley said. “It was like an open friend group, essentially.”
She did not spend much energy marketing it because she knew she would be leaving Australia soon. Still, by the end of Tankersley’s six months abroad, the Sunrise Social Club became her main social network.
From its beginning, she knew she wanted to bring Sunrise Social Club back to Richmond with her. As a Virginia native with a double major in business administration and health studies, she thought that Richmond was an untapped market for clubs like it. When she returned to campus, she recreated the club, deciding that it would convene every Thursday for sunrise and every Sunday for sunset, and it would be open to everybody.
“Nobody in their right mind is driving two hours to run 2 miles, but it’s because it’s such a deep-rooted, supportive community that people just want to be involved in.”
Through previous fitness content on TikTok and Instagram, she already had a base of followers. She also owned a Nikon D7500 camera and did photography as a side hobby, which helped her capture the sky’s beauty as she attempted to appeal to possible runners. She began advertising through social media and with sidewalk chalk.
“Everything I post on social media, I view it as my brand image,” Tankersley said, “and how people are perceiving me is essentially like an entity,” something she learned in a marketing class she took her junior year.
The Richmond edition of the Sunrise Social Club launched at 6 a.m. on Aug. 29, 2024, in the parking lot of a small shopping strip across the road from campus. At that moment, Tankersley stood alone, stretching. Nobody else was there.
“I was fine with it because I knew it would be a better story if no one came to the first one,” she said. “I was confident that people would come eventually, but people started trickling in a little bit after 6."
@avatank.fit Sweetest morning of my life 🩷🌞 thank you to everyone who chased the sun with me!!! Go follow the ig sunrise.social.club to join!!!!!
♬ original sound - ava tank
As her stretching circle grew in the no-longer-empty but still dark parking lot, she saw her dream coming to fruition. Twenty-five people showed up to run the planned 2.2-mile loop across the Huguenot Bridge just south of campus. As they started their run and crossed the half-mile-long bridge, the sun peeked over the horizon and lit up the sky with an array of pink and orange hues.
Tankersley felt fulfilled and happy after the success on the first day, but it was only the start. Fifty-five people showed up the following week, an increase she attributes to a viral TikTok video that she posted after the first run. It shows her alone just before the meeting time, nervous that nobody would show up. Then it pans to the group of people running and a tickled Tankersley saying, “They showed up!” It quickly garnered just under a million views and now has more than 200,000 likes. The viral clip of her failure-turned-success morning was exactly what she needed to get the word out into the Richmond region and beyond.
In the following months, Tankersley built on her success, and the club has flourished, drawing everyone from high school students to 65-year-olds.
“We have people that drive two hours to come to this,” Tankersley said. “Nobody in their right mind is driving two hours to run 2 miles, but it’s because it’s such a deep-rooted, supportive community that people just want to be involved in.”
The club quickly expanded beyond the time participants spent running together and building a tight-knit community. After the runs, they enjoy coffee and conversation at a Starbucks near campus and the occasional trip to Roots Natural Kitchen for dinner. Some weekends, Tankersley plans outdoor activities like days on the James River and hikes in Shenandoah National Park. Before the Richmond Marathon in November, Sunrise met to make supportive posters to cheer on the runners.
“It is the highlight of my week,” Madi Norris, ’25, said during a Thursday morning run in November. She had been attending since September, even though she was not a serious runner. “Ava is such a positive and fun person,” Norris said, “I would never worry about not being able to do anything.”
Norris initially joined the walking group in the club, but after a few weeks she saw that her potential was much more than she realized. Now, she runs the 2.2 miles. This phenomenon is not an anomaly. Working out with other people can have an effect on how efficiently you reach your fitness goals. Mainly, it holds you accountable, said Turk, the UR psychologist. When you have someone expecting you to show up to work out, you are less likely to bail than if you exercise alone. Showing up for yourself and your friends in group exercise has clear physical benefits, and it also can help improve mental health.
Some weekends, Tankersley plans outdoor activities like days on the James River and hikes in Shenandoah National Park.
“Social support is actually one of the biggest protective factors people can have when it comes to mental health,” Turk said. “If you’re building this group of social support and pairing that with activity or exercise, which is already really helpful for mental health and stress, you have these two really big protective factors at the same time.”
It’s a virtuous cycle of human connection and personal improvement. Just as exercise helped Tankersley find community in Australia, the same sense of community is helping runners like Norris be healthier in Richmond.
As graduation approaches and Tankersley’s senior year progresses, she is thinking more and more about what she will do after graduation. One of her life goals is to see as many sunrises and sunsets as possible, something the Sunrise Social Club is certainly helping her do. For her career, she wants to continue investing her time and energy into growing the club. Her first merchandise item — cozy sweatshirts featuring the club’s logo — dropped in November, just in time for the freezing morning runs. That same month, she landed her first paid partnership with a local running store, allowing it to do demos at her run club meetings in exchange for promotion.
“The dream, years down the line once I build this up enough, is to have a Sunrise Social Club café where I can have my own meeting spot,” Tankersley said. For now, she is focusing on building her brand partnerships and merchandising. What is most important to her has not changed — the real human connections.
“We’ve obviously seen some really incredible sunrises and sunsets, and it makes me so happy,” Tankersley said. “For so many years, this was my favorite part of the day. But now, even more than watching the sunrise, I like watching other people watch it because I’m sharing something that I love.”
Author’s note: Jenna Lapp, ’25, is a journalism major from Lancaster, Pennsylvania. She studied abroad in Australia at the same time as Tankersley but in a different city. Also a lover of exercising outdoors, she found the Sunrise Social Club in the fall.