If you’ve ever spent time on the Meewasin on a Saturday morning, you’ve probably encountered the Saturday Morning Running Crew.
The group has been running along the river every Saturday morning in some capacity for about 15 years. Today the crew, who affectionately refer to each other by nicknames, includes Father Kent, TC, JWeb, Veep, Danno, Cap’tn, CP, TommyMac and GadgetGuy. The nine men — and the occasional guest — are hard to miss on the trails. They banter as the kilometres fall away and always greet others on the trail, often jokingly encouraging passersby to heckle those bringing up the rear of their group.
“Mostly we are just a bunch of old dudes who don’t really listen to our bodies and just love to run,” says Jason Weber (JWeb), who is credited with starting the group with some of his colleagues at the University of Saskatchewan’s College of Kinesiology.
“I always hated running alone so would do my best to try and recruit a few willing and unwilling friends to join.”
While the makeup of the group has changed over time as people moved away and others were introduced, today’s core crew has been together for a few years now and all members count each other as good friends.
“Our talks and discussions are always different because we all have different backgrounds, different levels of running and training, different events that we’re training for. But on a Saturday morning we’re all running as one,” says member Tarrant Cross Child (TC).
The crew meet in front of the Broadway Roastery on Saturday mornings then take off for a 10-to-15-kilometre run along the Meewasin. Much of the run is done at a conversational pace, but a few members are known for speeding up in the final kilometres (and know they will be teased for it after). Occasionally they throw in some stairs or hill repeats. Jabs, laughs and photos are mandatory.
“If I don’t take a picture, the other guys will beak me, says crew member Kent Hartshorn (Father Kent). “I have been known to make the crew turn around and rerun a route just to get a better shot. They love it.”
The photos are posted most weeks to the @SatMornRunningCrew Instagram account, which provides a time lapse of Saskatoon’s changing weather and captions that bring crew members back to the running and non-running events that defined their life at any given moment.
Every Remembrance Day the crew runs to 10 war monuments in Saskatoon and spend time remembering at each. On Christmas Eves the runners dress up in Christmas lights and check out local Christmas light displays.
All runs end where they began at the Broadway Roastery where runners grab a coffee and continue their discussions (while following COVID-19 protocols).
“I think there are few of us that come to run just for the drink and conversation after,” Hartshorn says.
Crew members rarely miss a Saturday run — some say it’s because they fear the shaming that would happen if they did — and usually always feel the better for it.
“We truly support and cheer on each other in their running goals,” Hartshorn says. “Running is always thought of as an individual sport. We have turned it into a team sport.”
