A golden Tibetan singing bowl filled with palo santo rests on a wood coffee table adjacent to a rack of running shirts, shorts, and sports bras.
Pablo Gil, a 43-time marathoner and runner since 2011, lights the holy wood every morning he arrives at 7 A.M. to Metta Running House, a specialty running store he co-founded in February 2022 in the upscale Polanco neighborhood of Mexico City, a city of 22 million.
To label it a specialty running store, though, is not quite accurate. It’s more than a one-stop shop offering the latest high-tech apparel, training shoes, nutrition products, and other geeky running gadgets. Metta Running House is the first business of its kind in Mexico, and a unicorn in the landscape of running stores around the world.
A handful of unconventional independent running stores do exist like Boston-based Tracksmith, The Loop Running Supply in Austin, Texas, and Distance in Paris, all of which counter the mass market retail experience of places like Fleet Feet Sports and Dick’s Sporting Goods. But none offer the multi-faceted approach like Metta. This is a store that…
