Association

In the 1980s running was already done regularly in the spring, on the campus of the Erasmus University or in the Kralingse Bos, as part of the fitness training. In May 1989, fitness trainer George Westerduin suffered a tennis injury and proposed to train for the Rotterdam marathon with a group of people from the university.

Thus, during the months of May and June 1989, a group of fitness training students laid the foundation (among other things, with a Cooper test) for what became known as the “marathon project” in September. More than 35 runners followed training, schedules and trim runs and races during the 1989 – 1990 academic year. Almost all of them completed the marathon in April 1990. The joint experiences left a taste for more, and the project was continued the following year to form an association in the fall of 1991: the EUR-Roadrunners were born! The emphasis now shifted to shorter distances. After a new athletics track was built in the Kralingse Bos in 1997, interval runs were trained there.

For a while the Roadrunners were recognizable by the striking club clothing: yellow shirts with purple shorts. The yellow shirts stayed with us, but the purple shorts went. Over the years, the EUR Roadrunners has become a versatile road athletics club, where students train for distances ranging from 5 kilometers to the marathon. We pride ourselves in being easily accessible for every student: beginning runner or professional, young or old, Dutch or international. In 2020/2021 we celebrated our 30th anniversary!