Where Mexico City actually gets outdoors: the crews, the mountains and a 61-kilometre Sunday

Mexico City loves its concrete-monster reputation, but here is the inconvenient fact: the city sits at 2,240 metres, ringed by forest, and its people train harder — and more seriously — than almost any capital on the continent. The scene exists, it is huge, and like everywhere else it is organised through Instagram accounts, crews that run at night and national parks that appear on the metro map. What is missing is someone to hand you the list. This is the list.

The crews that run the city

Running in Mexico City stopped being a solo sport years ago. Midnight Runners Mexico City (@midnightrunnersmexicocity) is the local chapter of the global crew: they run Thursdays at 7 p.m., speaker in tow, party included, and draw thousands of followers who show up knowing nobody and end up staying. Runners Society (@runners.society) hosts a free run club from the Estela de Luz on Mondays and Thursdays at 8 p.m. — zero cost, zero excuses. And to keep a finger on everything else there is Runners CDMX (@cdmx_runners), the community account reposting runners citywide under #runcdmx. There are more — The Gang Run Club mixes track work, easy city runs and Chapultepec — but those three accounts already get you in.

The Sunday the city belongs to bikes

Every Sunday morning — except the last of the month — Mexico City does something few world capitals dare: it closes its main avenues to cars. The Muévete en Bici Sunday ride has spent 18 years and more than 670 editions turning Reforma, the Centro, Coyoacán and the route to the Basílica into a 61-kilometre circuit for bikes, skates and runners, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. It is free, there are bike loans on Reforma, and it is probably the best gateway into the city's urban outdoors: nobody asks your level, your gear or your membership.

The mountains start where the city ends

The south of Mexico City does not end: it climbs. The Ajusco, the Desierto de los Leones and Los Dinamos are real forest inside the city limits, and a whole generation of projects will take you there. Desierto Trails (@desiertotrails), founded in 2021 by Luis Toledo, runs hikes through the Ajusco and the Desierto de los Leones that end in a coffee tasting — hiking with a long lunch built in. Senderismo Plus organises routes for all ages in the San Nicolás Totolapan park, and Introspecta moves a community of tens of thousands with its conscious-hiking outings. If you have never walked a mountain, start there: the city has operators for every level and the forest is an hour from the Zócalo.

Olympic water and kayak canals

The best-kept secret of Mexico City's outdoors is in Xochimilco, and it is not the trajineras. The Virgilio Uribe course at Cuemanco was the first artificial canoeing course in the world — built for the 1968 Olympic Games — and today around 140 athletes train there daily, elite rowing and canoeing in the middle of the city. For the rest of us, Kayaking Xochimilco operates from the Cuemanco pier with guided kayak outings through the canals: the same water, a different rhythm, and a version of Xochimilco without loudspeakers that very few people know.

Climbing indoors (and then out)

Indoor climbing is having its moment. Casa Boulder (@casa_boulder), in Coyoacán near the Ciudad Universitaria metro, claims the title of the city's oldest and most accessible wall and is still a school for whole generations. La Luna Muro (@lalunamuro) runs group classes with instructors and organises trips to real rock. And RockSolid, also in Coyoacán, is the largest climbing gym in Mexico, with more than 500 square metres of wall. You start on plastic on a random Tuesday and within months you are looking at the rock of Los Dinamos with new eyes.

Where it all gets announced

The honest answer to 'how do I get in': Instagram first — nearly every crew above posts its next outing there. Official websites second: the city government publishes each week's Sunday-ride route, and the hiking operators open their dates on their own pages. The frustrating part is that it lives in ten different places. That is exactly the problem this magazine — and this platform — exists to fix: real events, one city, one place.

If you run one of these crews, classes or races: your events belong here too, and publishing them takes minutes. That is the whole point of ntl.events.

See you on the Ajusco. no te limites.