Mondays Run Club Building Belonging One Vancouver Monday at a Time

A Seawall, a Beer, and an Open Invite

There is a particular stretch of Vancouver's seawall where the water opens up and the mountains sit so close you feel you could reach them. It was somewhere along that path, in the strange suspended quiet of 2020, that Veronica Skye started running. She had just moved from Toronto, traded fifteen years in the travel industry and a world of fitness retreats for a fresh start in a city where she knew almost no one. The seawall became her compass. Running became her anchor. And a nagging thought kept returning: if she was this hungry for human connection, surely other people were too. By that point, Vancouver had a handful of run clubs, but none of them matched what Veronica was looking for. Warm without being cloying. Social without being performative. A place where the pace mattered less than the people. So in April 2021, she did what any good community builder does when the community she wants does not exist: she made one. The invite was simple. A Monday night 5K. A beer after. No timers, no egos, no gatekeeping. She posted it and waited. People showed up. And then more people showed up. And Mondays Run Club was born.

From a Handful to More Than a Hundred

What began as a modest gathering on a weeknight has grown, steadily and organically, into one of Vancouver's most recognisable running communities. Today, more than 100 runners turn up every Monday, drawn not by competition but by consistency. Seven pace groups now thread through different corners of the city each week, the meeting point rotating to keep the routes fresh and the neighbourhoods explored. Whether someone is stepping out for their very first group run or returning for their hundredth Monday, the welcome is the same: genuine, unhurried, and warm. The Mondays Run Club Strava community has grown alongside the in-person crew, giving members a way to track their progress, cheer each other on between Mondays, and stay connected across the week. A team of more than fifteen leaders now shoulders the work of holding that community together, each one bringing a different energy and a different gift to the group. The infrastructure is real, but the soul of the crew has not changed: movement, connection, and a place to belong.

The Leaders Who Make It Run

Communities do not sustain themselves. Behind every thriving run club there are people who show up early, stay late, and keep the energy alive when no one is watching. At Mondays Run Club, those people are easy to spot. Sandon, one of the crew's captains and a legacy leader, is a therapist by trade and carries that quality into every Monday. His calm is not passive; it is the kind of grounded, steady presence that people instinctively gravitate toward. He leads one of the faster pace groups, the Spicy 6, and brings the heat without ever making anyone feel left behind. Patricio, who relocated from Mexico City and leads the 8KM pace group, was the kind of person every new community needs in its early chapters. He arrived and immediately made himself indispensable, showing up first, leaving last, handling setup and teardown without being asked, and doing it all with a warmth that became contagious. You can find Patricio on Instagram and on Strava, where his consistency week over week tells its own story. Jana, another coach, is the kind of presence you feel before you see her. Her energy fills a gathering before she has even said a word, and she has a gift for noticing the new runner standing slightly apart and making them feel immediately found. Bryony leads the walking group with an intention and tenderness that reframes what participation in a run club can look like. Her approach is a quiet reminder that showing up at your own pace is not a compromise; it is the whole point. Kendall, an accountant who doubles as one of the Spicy 6 leaders, brings the kind of sharp, detail-oriented reliability that keeps events moving and people on track, all with a giggle that undercuts any seriousness before it gets too heavy. And Zoe, who has been leading for nearly three years, is the original heart of the Chill 6 pace group: steady, encouraging, and the first person who makes a nervous newcomer feel like they belong exactly where they are.

Programs That Go Beyond the Monday

Veronica has never been content to simply run the same 5K on loop. From the beginning, Mondays Run Club has been a space for programming that meets people where they are and nudges them toward where they could be. Sole Ties is one of Vancouver's first run club experiences designed specifically for singles, weaving social connection into the rhythm of movement in a way that feels organic rather than forced. In Her Tracks, developed in collaboration with adidas Terrex, introduced women to trail running through a structured, supported program that brought participants onto the trails for the first time. Trail Mix opened that same spirit of exploration to a co-ed audience, building a community of runners who wanted more than pavement beneath their feet. Seasonal challenges run through the year, designed not to rank members against each other but to create shared goals, shared effort, and the particular kind of closeness that comes from hard things done together. These programs reflect something essential about how Mondays Run Club thinks about community: the Monday night run is the heartbeat, but the programming is the nervous system, carrying energy and connection into every corner of the week and the season. Veronica herself has walked the path she asks her community to follow. Her first ultramarathon, a 50KM race through the TransSelkirks, was not a footnote in her running story but a turning point. It sparked a love for trail running that has since become one of the defining chapters of her own athletic life. In 2026, she is taking on six races while simultaneously guiding members of her community toward their own first ultras. The founder and the community are growing together, and that parallel motion matters.

Two Run Nights, One Crew Culture

Monday remains the soul of Mondays Run Club, but the crew also shows up on Wednesdays. The weekly MRC x Tality run, held in collaboration with Tality Wellness in the Mount Pleasant neighbourhood, starts at 5:30 PM and offers a second weekly touchpoint for members who want more movement and more connection between Mondays. The partnership reflects a broader instinct within the crew: collaboration over competition, community over clout. Vancouver's wellness and running scenes are stronger together, and Mondays Run Club has been quietly building those bridges since its earliest days. The Monday run itself rotates its meeting point each week, moving through different Vancouver neighbourhoods and giving the crew a reason to explore the city they love together. The distance is accessible, the pace is moderate, and the atmosphere is the constant. Whatever corner of Vancouver you find the crew gathered in on a given Monday evening at 5:30 PM, the feeling is the same: somewhere you were expected, somewhere you are welcome, somewhere the run is the excuse and the people are the reason.

What Four and a Half Years Builds

Veronica describes Mondays Run Club as a community that feels more like family than anything else. That word, family, gets used loosely in running circles, but at Mondays Run Club it seems to be earned rather than claimed. It shows up in the leaders who give their Monday evenings week after week. It shows up in the runners who come back after a hard week precisely because the crew is there waiting. It shows up in the programs built for people who might otherwise feel that running, or wellness, or community, was not quite for them. Through her Substack, The Mondays Effect, Veronica writes about community, culture, adventure, and the strange alchemy that happens when people move together through a city. It is storytelling rooted in the same instinct that launched Mondays Run Club in the first place: the belief that connection does not happen by accident, but it can, with the right invitation, happen every week. Four and a half years in, the crew is not slowing down. Plans for 2026 and beyond are already taking shape, and the ambition behind them matches the energy that has always driven this community forward. What started as one woman's open invite for a Monday night 5K and a beer after has become something genuinely rare: a running crew that makes Vancouver feel smaller and more human, one Monday at a time. Follow Mondays Run Club on Instagram to find out where the next one starts.