KRAFT Runners: The most fun you can have in Berlin

Berlin, Germany. One of the world’s most famous cities, Berlin is steeped in history and now regarded as the global capital for modern art.

Berlin’s 3.5 million inhabitants love to run. The Berlin Marathon sits proudly as not only one of the 6 majors, but the fastest marathon course in the world. At a more grassroots level, Berlin is home to some of the coolest modern running crews in the world.

There’s the Berlin Braves, founded in 2012 and now expanding into other sports and even a physical headquarters.

There are closed crews like Run Pack Berlin, who according to their own website don’t accept new members.

Then there is KRAFT Runners. Founded in 2016 by two friends, KRAFT have shown in a short space of time just how much fun you can have with a pair of shoes, some friends, and a cold beer.

KRAFT co-founder, Eugen Fink, explains how simply KRAFT came together.

“Marco and I met as pacers at Nike Run Club. After we signed up for the Berlin Marathon we decided to start training together outside of NRC.

We felt like there was no open run club that was cool and encouraged people to just show up and run.

We decided we should just start our own crew and set it up how we like. It’s not that hard! We were already training together anyway so it was easy to open it up to other people”.

KRAFT introduced themselves to the running world with a bang, showing very early on that they are credible runners out for more than just a cool social media presence.

“The key milestone for us early on was a spontaneous relay run. We were sitting in a pub on a Sunday night and we decided that it would be fun to run from Berlin to Hamburg (around 300km).

So right there we divided all the tasks like hiring a car, renting a hotel for the finish, all this stuff we just divided between six of us".

"The next Friday after work we gathered at the Brandenburg Gate. We had told a few friends what we were doing and all of a sudden there was like 40 people there to cheer us off! We thought that was crazy, a Friday night in Berlin in November, these people could be at home or somewhere warm, instead they were watching us run out of Berlin!

It was quite cold already in early November, so we did 10km legs each. We worked it so the person running had a bike rider next to them, and the bike rider was always the next runner. The idea was that you get warm on the bike before your run. It didn’t quite work, the riding was too slow to be ready to run!”

That was in November 2016. Fast forward five months and KRAFT found themselves in Los Angeles, about to tackle renowned unsanctioned, unsupported ultra relay The Speed Project.

The Speed Project, created by Nils Arend and his friend, Blue, is a 340 mile relay from Santa Monica Pier to Las Vegas. It’s a race if you want to race, or a run if you want to enjoy it more. To be eligible to set a record teams must be six members of mixed gender.

For this group from Berlin, the dry heat was understandably a challenge.

“Death Valley was tough. All our training was here in Berlin when the temperatures were below zero, so doing 10km legs in the heat of Death Valley was exhausting.

My tip is this: don’t buy too much food. We had all these kilos of pasta and rice and we never ate it. Buy Coca Cola. We even had all these melons, I have no idea why".

"By the time we got to Las Vegas most of us were too exhausted or sick to party properly. We still went to a pool party and a nightclub though".

"This year we want to have more fun, so we are taking 10 runners. We might do some crazy stuff, maybe some beers during the run, some push ups or burpees on the course, who knows?”

One thing the strong run crews seem to have in common is their inclusiveness. This is no different for KRAFT, and not surprising given their background at NRC.

“KRAFT is a very open community. We have some professional athletes running with us, but we also are open to the regular person from around the area who is new to running or just starting to lose weight and get fit.

When we have some people showing up to our runs that we don’t know, we will go and say hello and find out where they came to us from. Some will say ‘oh a friend told me that this was a cool way to go for a run’. They tell us that they don’t even like running, but they heard it’s cool so they want to check it out”.

KRAFT combine the social inclusion with a focus on hosting tough runs.

"We do a Tuesday evening session. Every Tuesday in any weather. We couldn’t cancel it if we wanted to, there’s too many people, they would turn up anyway!

We start at Marco’s cafe, called Cafe Kraft, which is how we got our name.

We’re not doing easy 5 or 10km runs, people can do that by themselves, it’s boring.

We always do intervals, things like mile repeats. There’s no split of fast runners versus amateurs because you get to see the fast guys when they come back past you, so it’s still a community event.

Even now in winter, people keep showing up in bad weather. This week it’s 0 degrees and we still have 40-50 runners turning up”.

Since 2009 when the first urban run crews were created, the sub culture has exploded. Crews are popping up in cities around the world, and large centres like Berlin are now home to several established crews.

“These days there are maybe 15 crews just in Berlin! Some are very small though, just a handful of friends getting together. Other citie like Cologne, Hamburg, Frankfurt are also getting some run crews popping up.

It’s a great thing that there are more run crews. Why not? It’s better than Netflix!

Don’t get me wrong, I love Netflix, I love drinking and eating, and we do a lot of partying here, but running is just as cool as any of those things”.

After creating such a strong community in just 12 months, there’s a logical question for Eugen about the plans for the future.

“I never know how to answer this question! I get it all the time from runners, friends, my parents, I can’t answer it!

Marco and I don’t act like co-founders. We are just runners in the crew. We had a meeting recently with the core crew about what we should be aiming at, and for us it comes back to quality.

It’s kind of meaningless to get 100 people at a run if you only know 20 names, we would rather know the people and form a relationship with everyone.

We don’t know what the future holds exactly. We don’t judge our crew on trying to be the biggest or whatever, we want to focus on forming relationships and strong social groups in the run crew”.

Editors Note: Thanks to Max Menning for all of the images used in this article.