Ascension Day parkrun, 14th May 2026

Ann and Eddie Smith followed up their Dutch parkrun at the weekend with a trip to Denmark where they took in another parkrun – and it wasn’t even a Saturday! Ann explains:

“Ascension Day (40 days after Easter) is a public holiday in many European countries and in some, a special parkrun day. This year it was also Eddie’s birthday, so an excellent excuse to visit Copenhagen where three parkruns were taking place. On Thursday morning we headed for Fælledparken, a large park adjacent to the national football stadium.
Many of the regular volunteers were away so Anja and Lars introduced themselves to a crowd of mainly British parkrunners as ‘fake run directors’ who had performed this role once before, last Ascension Day, and proceeded to give an entertaining and detailed briefing including introducing each volunteer by name.

During our three-lap run around the park we could see construction of a fan zone for the Danish men’s cup final taking place that afternoon.

After the parkrun there was some confusion about position numbers, explained by use of incorrect packs of finish tokens. Fortunately the ‘true run director’ kindly interrupted his holiday to sort this out. I don’t think many people cared about their finish position. We were there to experience the special atmosphere created by around 250 visitors who had travelled from overseas for a midweek parkrun, coffee and pastries and discussion with serious parkrun tourists.

Unfortunately the local football team FC København didn’t have such a good day. They lost the cup final to Midtjylland but the fans would have enjoyed slides and a bouncy castle.”