Balap Lari - event Recap

Balap Lari - a nod to Indonesian culture.

A week ago I had dinner with some friends who also happen to be staff at Flowerboy. Irsad asked If I had heard about Balap Lari. As soon as he showed me the viral videos I knew we had to showcase this somehow. I loved how niche it was, how culturally important it is and how it had a time limit to making it happen. A more detailed explanation of what exactly it is will follow below.

I know from creative projects that there is a general “rule” and it’s something like this. 

A project will take as long as the time given. Meaning if there is a 2 week or a 2 day window to get something done we can always find a way. 

I went with my gut feeling and gave ourselves 5 days to make it work. After asking some of the boys celebrating Ramadan we came to the conclusion that there needed to be prize money. I made the post and the response was wild. I’m not a huge numbers or analytics guy but I knew from the amount of shares being almost equal to the likes that this event would be special. 

I somehow convinced Adidas to support the event with free shoes for the winners  and breakfast for everyone. Grateful for the team over there for believing in this. 

Here is a little background I can share based on information collected. Please feel free to correct or leave additional comments below.

Balap Lari events happen during Ramadan. Which is a month of fasting, prayer, reflection and community practised by Muslims worldwide. With all this happening the youth find themselves active in the nights and motorcycle drag races are popular. Because these are illegal and often involve police interaction they started doing barefoot drag races to pass the time, avoid the cops and make some extra cash. ( if you were fast or bet on the right set of feet ). In major cities the turn outs are huge and they often block off the main streets to host such events.

So, we decided to host the run at 3 am and celebrate together by offering Sahur afterwards; which is breakfast eaten together 1 hour before sunrise. The event was such high energy for something seemingly early. The street was buzzing with smiles, some nerves amongst those with soft feet and an overall positive vibe. The idea of an organized bracket went out the window quickly and we just ran heats of 4 with the top 2 going on to the next round. There was a good mix of locals and expats in both the men’s and women’s heats. It was pretty obvious in the first couple races that the locals were here to win. 

Some blood, close finishes and early round knockouts brought some great energy to the crowd and the participants continued to deliver valiant efforts. The energy was high the whole time. It was such a unique experience and just seeing the smiles all around made it so worthwhile.

The finals came down to 3 men - Bayu, Diwa and Angga. It was an electric finish. Diwa was strong all night but really had to push for the win as Bayu and Angga were close behind. It was so cool to see the crowd stoke and the mutual admiration for one another.

Ibu Jamie and Maria were the speedy two finalists for the girls and it was a very close finish with Jamie crossing the line a foot ahead. Again the hugs and love between competitors was beautiful to witness.

This was quickly followed by some bandaging and as the energy came back to normal it was awesome to see everyone mingling and enjoying the nasi that was prepared by our manager Rizky’s mom. It takes a community to make something like this happen and we are super grateful for the trust from you guys, the brands and are excited to keep building core memories together through the act of running for a long time to come!

Thanks and hope to see you for a run sometime soon

here is a link to photos from IMAN :

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/pw2xknw4n9bcyek9pq510/AOeVEybyc0SslnDkfaEZhhc?rlkey=pg5w2xhnhm02hlk57iszf8ldl&st=51l2et1p&dl=0