Our founder story
“The reasons are yours. The miles are yours.”
In March of 2024, there were three of us.
Me and two others who showed up on a Thursday evening at seven because a run through the city sounded better than whatever else was on the table. No event. No formal sign-up. Just a time, a place, and the vague, unspoken feeling that something might develop if we kept showing up.
We kept showing up.
More than a hundred people run with us now. Through rain, cold, and dark. The post-run hang lasts longer than it needs to, which tells you more about these people than any description I could write. They found somewhere they didn’t want to leave.
I couldn’t have predicted that. What I had was a belief that if we built something honest, something without pretense, the people it was built for would eventually find it.
Before that first Thursday, I wanted more from myself and my life. Training and racing gave me a way to find out what I was capable of. Limits I had assumed were fixed started to move. The name The 25th Hour came during that time, before I knew what the business would become.
The extra hour is the capacity you haven’t had to use yet. The part of yourself you meet when you commit to something long enough to see where it takes you.
Today, The 25th Hour is an endurance brand founded in Ottawa. We make clothing, build community, and put on races. Each is a way into the same idea: there is more in you, and it’s worth finding out what that looks like.
You might find us through something you wear, a Thursday run, or the start line at PR Night. What connects those things is the person choosing them. Someone who wants to see what they can become. Someone who cares about the life they’re building and the people they’re building it with.
You don’t need to be the fastest person there. You don’t need a race on the calendar. You need a reason to start and a willingness to find out what happens when you keep going.
That’s where Built to Endure comes from. It’s the standard we hold ourselves to. Endurance is choosing, again and again, to keep building something that matters to you. A body. A discipline. A life worth the effort it takes to live it.
What that looks like is different for everyone. The reasons are yours. The miles are yours. The journey has always been yours.
We just believe it’s better when it isn’t only yours.
The 25th Hour is still being written. The Thursday runs keep happening. The events grow. The clothing takes shape. People find us in ways that still catch me off guard.
Ottawa is where this started. Wherever you live, whatever you’re working toward, I hope you recognise something of yourself in what we’re building.
If you’re here, come find us Thursday at seven. If you’re somewhere else, there’s a place for you in this too.
Whatever happens after that. Well. That’s what the 25th hour is for.
Anthony
Founder, The 25th Hour · Ottawa
