Well hello, there. Long time no post, I know. Life with a small child, working as a freelancer, and living through a pandemic aren’t so conducive to regular blogging. My energy for baking and cooking is also minimal, hence no recent recipes (I should probably post a “What’s Been Cooking?” edition soon). I am managing to fit in my three runs a week, though – when I haven’t caught a cold or some other virus that E has brought home from day care – and that’s keeping me mostly sane!
Speaking of running, that’s what this post is about. If you are a longtime reader of my blog, you may know that I have been an avid parkrun fan ever since discovering it after moving to London in 2013. Completing 50 parkruns in 2018 was a big achievement for me, and it’s something I miss most about living in London.
When we moved to Münster in 2019, I knew that parkrun was slowly catching on in Germany but was surprised that there was not yet a parkrun in Münster, given the amount of green space there is and the number of active people who live here.
Fast forward to late 2020, when I stumbled upon a Facebook group called “Ein parkrun für Münster – bringing parkrun to Münster.” One of the parkrun Germany ambassadors, Janina, had started it to gauge interest and support people to set up a parkrun in Münster. I immediately joined the group to stay in the loop and see what I could do to help. At some point Janina set up a Zoom meeting for those who were more seriously interested, and there were about 10 participants, including Jochen, who had helped set up a parkrun in Würzburg not long before, and who has become our Event Director (somewhere along the way, I’ve actually become the Co-ED!). Some participants had never heard of parkrun before, but all bought into the concept and were keen to get one off the ground in Münster.
So what happened next? The main hurdle was going to be getting the city of Münster’s approval for a parkrun course; once you have that, parkrun helps you handle much of the rest of the logistics. Our first choice was one loop of the well-known Aasee, and the group even did a couple of test runs there. However, the city rejected our first proposal, citing too much regular foot traffic around the Aasee and something about not allowing anyone to put up signs around it. I think the city also had trouble understanding the concept of parkrun as “free, weekly, 5km timed community events around the world.” We had been warned of that possibility by other teams that had set up parkruns in Germany; a former London Heathside club-mate Sandra, who lived in Stuttgart for a few years and helped set up a parkrun there, had also alerted me to this potential challenge.
Luckily, we had already discussed a Plan B: two loops of the Wienburgpark, a couple of kilometers north of Münster’s city center. After a bit of back and forth with the city, our proposed park/route was approved in fall 2021, and planning commenced in earnest. (Throughout this time, the core organisation team and others had been meeting weekly for an unofficial parkrun on the route, at the usual parkrun time. We had over 40 of these informal meet-ups (Lauftreffs, in German) before the official parkrun started. They were a great way to drum up interest and start building a network of potential parkrunners in Münster.)
The Covid-19 situation (or die Corona-Lage, as it’s often referred to in German) prevented us from officially starting the parkrun before Christmas, and it didn’t improve much into early 2022. We finally bit the bullet and decided to start in mid-March. Since parkruns are outside, they are allowed even when Covid numbers are relatively high.
So after a long run-up, many unofficial parkruns, a number of Zoom meetings and lots of WhatsApping, we finally launched the first official parkrun in Münster, the Wienburgpark parkrun, on 12 March 2022!
And what a start it was: we had 47 participants, 14 volunteers, a few spectators, and even blue sky and sunshine. In case you’re wondering, the course consists two flat laps of the park on mixed terrain. It could be pretty fast, although there are a number of sharpish turns and a muddy day could slow you down on the mulch sections.
In any case, we have a great core team of enthusiastic (park)runners and I’m excited to see how the event and volunteer team grow. I’ll probably be on the volunteering side of things for a while (I handed out finishing tokens this week and I’ll be run director for the first time next week – eek!), but I’m looking forward to having my first officially-timed crack at the course – and completing my 76th parkrun after a long break.
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Wherever I am, you are there also 