010 Run Crew Turning a Chance Encounter into Rotterdam Running Community

It started with a date that went sideways in the best possible way. Thibaud, a Belgian who had recently made Rotterdam his home, was out on a Sunday evening with Josephine, another Belgian newcomer to the city. Across the same restaurant, completely by coincidence, his longtime friend Shaun had arrived for dinner with a visiting cousin. Neither pair had any idea the other was there. By the end of the night, the four of them had pulled their tables together, and somewhere between the main course and the end of the evening, Josephine and Shaun discovered something that would quietly change the texture of Tuesday nights in Rotterdam forever.

A Shared Past, A New Beginning

As Josephine and Shaun talked, they realised they had both previously lived in Brussels. More than that, they had both run with BXL Run Crew during their time there. When they pulled up their Strava accounts and compared notes, the coincidence deepened: they had been on the same runs without ever crossing paths. Same routes, same nights, same crew. Total strangers the whole time. That shared history, and the mutual sense of having left something good behind when they moved north, planted a seed. A week after that restaurant dinner, Josephine and Shaun went for a small run together and made a decision: they would build something in Rotterdam like what they had loved in Brussels. Within three days, they had a name, a social media presence, and a plan. They started spreading the word through expat Facebook groups, casting a wide net into the sprawling network of newcomers and internationals who populate Rotterdam's neighbourhoods. The Tuesday after that, they hosted their first run. Ten people showed up. That was August 2023, and 010 Run Crew has not missed a Tuesday since.

The Name, The City, The Number

The name is not arbitrary. In the Netherlands, every city has a telephone area code, and Rotterdam's is 010. Locals use it as shorthand, a badge of identity, a shorthand for belonging to this particular city rather than Amsterdam or anywhere else. Choosing 010 as the crew's name was a quiet statement of intent: this crew is of Rotterdam, embedded in its character, shaped by its directness and its pride. Rotterdam is not a city that performs for visitors. It was flattened during the Second World War and rebuilt from the ground up, which gave it a modernist skyline unlike anything else in the Netherlands and a population that tends to be straightforward, unpretentious, and quietly resilient. The crew's founders brought their Belgian warmth to that Rotterdam temperament, and the combination turned out to work rather well. The city's large expat and international community, drawn by its port, its architecture, and its universities, provided a ready audience for something that offered connection without obligation or cost.

Shaun and the Spirit Behind the Crew

Shaun, one of the crew's founders, works in the relocation industry, which means his professional life is already about helping people find their footing in a new place. That orientation carries over into everything 010 Run Crew does. He describes himself as an optimist and a solution-thinker, someone who defaults to asking how rather than whether. That attitude is legible in the crew's structure, or rather its deliberate lack of rigid structure. There are no membership fees, no sign-up forms, no prerequisite pace or experience level. The barrier to entry is as low as it could possibly be: show up on Tuesday at seven in the evening. That simplicity was a choice, not an oversight. When you are new to a city, the last thing you want is to navigate a complicated vetting process before you are allowed to meet people. 010 Run Crew was built on the understanding that the point of running together is not the running. It is the together.

Every Tuesday, Without Exception

The rhythm of 010 Run Crew is built around one fixed point: Tuesday at 19:00. The meeting place is Café LaBru on Hartmansstraat, a starting line that gives the evening a sense of place before it even begins. The runs themselves are kept short and the pace easy, which means the focus lands exactly where it should: on conversation, on the streets of Rotterdam, on the experience of moving through the city with a group of people who are, more often than not, still figuring out where they belong. What changes each week is the post-run destination. The crew switches bars every Tuesday, turning the after-run into a kind of rotating tour of Rotterdam's neighbourhood spots. It keeps things fresh, introduces regulars to corners of the city they might not have found on their own, and gives first-timers a reason to come back the following week to see where the group lands next. The best place to track that week's location is through the crew's Strava club or their Instagram, where the schedule is posted regularly.

From Ten Strangers to Six Hundred

Growth like this does not happen because of a marketing strategy. It happens because something is genuinely good and people tell other people about it. Those first ten runners on that first Tuesday in August 2023 came because of a few posts in expat Facebook groups. The ones after them came because someone they met at work mentioned it, or because they saw a photo on Instagram, or because a friend dragged them along and they found themselves actually enjoying it. The crew now counts more than 600 members, with around 35 people showing up on any given Tuesday. That average is not small for a weekly run; it means that on a cold Tuesday in February, when the Rotterdam wind is doing what Rotterdam wind does, there are still three dozen people pulling on their shoes and heading to Hartmansstraat. That consistency, across seasons, across weather, across the endless calendar of competing Tuesday evening obligations, says something about what the crew has built and why it holds.

No Fees, No Conditions, No Catches

The decision to keep 010 Run Crew permanently free was made from the beginning and has never been revisited. This is not a model that requires a subscription, a donation, or a monthly fee. Anyone can come, anyone can leave, and anyone can come back. That openness is especially meaningful in a city like Rotterdam, where the international population is large and transient, where people arrive not always knowing how long they will stay, and where the social infrastructure of an entirely new place can feel slow and impersonal to build. A free Tuesday run with a warm group of people and a beer at the end is, in that context, something closer to a lifeline than a leisure activity. It is a way into the city. It is proof that you can arrive somewhere new and, within a week, already belong somewhere.

Come Find Out Where Tuesday Ends

If you are in Rotterdam on a Tuesday evening and you are looking for a reason to leave the house, 010 Run Crew is reason enough. Lace up, make your way to Café LaBru on Hartmansstraat before seven, and fall in with the group. The run is short, the pace is easy, and by the time you reach whatever bar the crew has picked for that particular Tuesday, you will probably have already made a plan to come back the following week. Check the crew's Instagram or their Strava club beforehand to find out where the evening ends. Everything else, you can figure out once you arrive.