After a few months of talking about visiting another Swedish parkrun, Brian, Henrik and I finally made the trip to our nearest event not done yet (NENDY), Växjösjön parkrun, on 23rd November 2024. Unlike the UK, where there seems to be a parkrun in almost every town, this is not the case in Sweden. Having already done Billdalsparken, around 20km south of Skatås, our NENDY was Växjösjön, in the middle of southern Sweden and around 230km away. Understandably, parkrun tourism is much less of a thing here than in the UK, and although there are only 12 parkruns in Sweden, very few parkrunners have completed them all.
Getting to Växjösjön parkrun
We left Gothenburg at around 5:45am, with Brian driving. I had tried to get an early night, but was woken up by my partner coming to bed at 2:30am and was unable to get back to sleep. This resulted in me having to run to our meeting point in the freezing cold on 4 hours of sleep. Luckily I wasn’t driving, and was able to nap a little in the back of the car.
We arrived in Växjö, a picturesque town with a population of a little under 100,000, and famous in part for a double-spired church which appears on stamps, with plenty of time to spare. The parkrun starts and ends on a grassy area next to the car park for the swimming pool. We watched some of the setup happening from the warmth of Brian’s car. Eventually Brian persuaded us to leave the car and brave the cold, and we introduced ourselves to the volunteers.
Pre-Event Briefing
Run Director Yang Shin has visited Skatås parkrun on a few occasions, and we recognised each other as I had been RD at Skatås on one of his visits. He talked us through the route, and explained that, due to construction on the other side of the lake, we could not run the usual route, and instead this would be an out-and-back along one side of the lake. Whilst we were getting our briefing, more runners kept arriving, and we had a respectable 29 attendees for a freezing cold morning. He gave the briefing in English for our benefit, using a megaphone. We got a shout out for being new to their parkrun, some vital safety information, and then we were off.
Växjösjön parkrun
Brian immediately shot off into the distance, and I followed the gentle downhill tarmac road down to the apartments around 200 metres away, at which point the route turns right to head towards the lake. After around 100 metres running alongside houses, we turned right again and were on a path with a lake view. I followed the runners in front, and took a bit of time to admire the view. The sun was very low in the sky, and the lake had a thin layer of frost on top. The ground wasn’t particularly frosty though, and I was regretting my choice of footwear (Icebugs). The Run Director, who was also acting as Photographer and Scanner, had taken a shortcut to the lake, and was taking photos of runners around the 600-metre point. He even got a photo of me with flying feet.
There weren’t a lot of signs, but they’re not really needed. As long as you stick as close to the lake as possible without actually jumping into it, you’re probably in the right place. I had been following a girl who seemed faster than me, but took the opportunity to overtake her before the boardwalk section, and started following a guy wearing an orange hat. The boardwalk section runs along the northern edge of Växjösjön, and part of the Western side, from around the 1km point until perhaps 1.6km. You couldn’t see the boards as it was covered in a layer of white frost. We had been advised to run on the asphalt to the right of it, but that went an ever so slightly longer route, and most people seemed to stick to the boardwalk. I was happy to be wearing Icebugs on this section, though nobody in regular trainers had any issues either.
I hadn’t noticed a kilometre sign, but my watch buzzed the 1st kilometre at 5:12. I realised that, even though this is a course that definitely has PB potential, this wasn’t going to be a day for a fast run. Between the frost, footwear choice, and lack of sleep, it probably wasn’t going to be faster than recent times at Skatås. However, maybe I could get that elusive final parkrun bingo number (16 seconds in the finish time). I had also checked the previous few weeks results, and knew there was a chance of being first female.
Leaving the boardwalk, we were still on the Western edge of the lake, with a small park to the right-hand side. I had been slowly reeling in a guy in an orange hat, and followed him at a point where there was an option of two paths. Follow the “always pick the option closest to the lake” rule and you will be fine. If I’d taken the other path it would only have added perhaps 5 metres to the distance, and my watch might actually have recorded 5km.
I hadn’t noticed a 2km sign, but I was starting to notice runners heading back to meet us. Some ran on the asphalt, and others on the gravel path I was running up. It was nice to see other runners and say “Heja heja” on the way past. Brain seemed to be around a minute ahead of me, and gave me some encouragement. There didn’t seem to be anyone between him and the guy with the orange hat. I tried to count how many people were ahead of me, and also paid attention to whether any of them were female (which they were not). We ran around the blue cones at the turning point with volunteers cheering us on, and headed back the way we had come, now saying “Heja heja” to runners who were behind us on the route. This is one of the nicest things about out and back courses.
As I felt I knew the way (always a dangerous thing to assume, given that I can get lost in my own house) I overtook the guy in the orange hat, and retraced my steps. It was easier to enjoy the view of the lake when heading in this direction, due to the sun being behind us now. I wished I could take some photos, but didn’t want to stop to do so. Everything was fine heading along the boardwalk, but things got a bit less clear after that. A guy overtook me. I said “Bra jobbat” (good job) and decided to follow him to the finish as there was nobody else ahead. However, he also didn’t seem confident of the way, and we nearly headed up an incorrect path towards the swimming hall. Realising the error, we continued on the correct path, and I recognised the outhouses as something we had run past on the way out. The guy in the black hat then considered turning left and running up the side of some houses, but there was no sign to turn left, and my watch was only saying 4.38km. I shouted at him in very poorly constructed Swedish that it was too soon to turn, and he decided to follow me instead. After a couple of hundred metres we saw the signs to turn left, and did so, knowing the end was near, but uphill. It doesn’t feel like a downhill at the start, but at the end you notice the uphill more.
I checked my watch and saw it was closer to 25 minutes than 24. Maybe I could get under 26 minutes, or perhaps I could get 26:16. Unfortunately neither was to be the case. The guy in the black hat, on taking that final turn to the left and seeing the finish, decided to overtake me and sprinted off into the distance. I didn’t have the energy to follow, and my Icebugs felt heavy. I had been expecting him to overtake me, so fair play. What I wasn’t expecting was for orange hat guy, who we hadn’t heard from since shortly after halfway, also overtake me on that final stretch. I guess the 5 or 6 seconds of us being unsure of where to go at a couple of points had enabled him to reel us in. I tried to pick up the pace to catch back up to him, but he got there a comfortable 2 seconds ahead of me, and I finished in 26:06.
After speaking to a couple of the volunteers, I went over to talk to the guy who overtook me. He held out his hand to shake mine, but I went for a fist bump instead. I tried to speak to him in Swedish, but one of his friends said that he didn’t speak much Swedish. I said “That’s ok, I don’t speak that much Swedish either” and continued in English. It turned out he had only been to the parkun a few times, and he and his friends were masters students studying Maths at Linneus university, where one of my new co-workers had just joined us from. We also spoke to the girl I overtook, who was looking rather cold whilst waiting on her parents to finish. They were both English but she was born in Sweden, so is bilingual with a hint of a Yorkshire accent. We cheered in her Dad as the RD rang the bell, so I assume he got a PR. The RD introduced me to the Event Director. They will be celebrating their 200th parkrun next Saturday, and they are going to bake cookies. The ED had been in touch with Anna-Karin from Billdalsparken parkrun, who has sent her the printing instructions for a parkrun cookie stamp and she is going to get it laser printed so that they will be parkrun cookies.
Unfortunately there was no fika this Saturday. Everyone was very friendly, but the one downside of the location was that the nearest café was almost 1km away. There wasn’t a suitable café in the swimming hall, so there is definitely an opportunity for anyone who wants to have a pop-up café specifically on Saturday mornings there. They sometimes have fika at the Finish area, as they will next week, but this is less common in colder weather.
With a long drive ahead of us, we said our goodbyes and headed for the car, taking a more scenic route back to Gothenburg now that we could appreciate the scenery in daylight, arriving home shortly after 2pm. Växjösjön is a friendly parkrun in a beautiful location. It deserves to have more runners. Although it’s not close to an airport or in a particularly touristy destination, it is definitely worth a visit. I’m planning to go back at some point in warmer weather to experience the standard route.
Summary
Växjösjön parkrun was my 4th parkrun in Sweden, and the 16th parkrun I have visited. It is a small, friendly parkrun in a beautiful setting. The lake is in sight for over 4km of the 5km route, and the usual route is a one-lap course, with no chance of getting lapped. It is also mostly a very flat course, with the potential for a fast time. There are toilet facilities in the swimming hall very close to the start area, which opens at 09:00am. Pretty much everyone speaks English in addition to Swedish, but you probably won’t encounter a large number of parkrun tourists there outside of special parkrun days. The town is pretty enough for a visit, and it is definitely reachable as a day trip from Malmö and various other towns in southern Sweden, and even from Gothenburg. If you live in or near Växjö, or have some other reason to visit the area, you should definitely make participating in Växjösjön parkrun one of your plans for the weekend.
Photo Acknowledgements
All photos in this blog post are used with permission from the core team at Växjösjön parkrun who took the photographs on the day.
