More than 200 participants set out from Herby’s Burgers during Oak Cliff Run Crew’s fifth-anniversary celebration Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Dallas.
Michael Cuviello/Dallas Morning News
More than 200 runners gathered in Oak Cliff on Thursday, pushing one another on as they started and finished a roughly 2½-mile route in near-100-degree heat.
Five years earlier, the Oak Cliff Run Crew was four friends trying to persuade others to join them.
Oak Cliff Run Crew participants listen to instructions before beginning the group’s fifth-anniversary run Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, outside Herby’s Burgers in Dallas.
Michael Cuviello/Dallas Morning News
An Oak Cliff Run Crew participant pushes a child in a stroller along the group’s fifth-anniversary route Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Dallas.
Michael Cuviello/Dallas Morning News
An Oak Cliff Run Crew participant runs through the neighborhood during the group’s fifth-anniversary event Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Dallas. Temperatures hovered near 100 degrees during the roughly 2½-mile route.
Michael Cuviello/Dallas Morning News
More than 200 runners and walkers gather outside Herby’s Burgers before Oak Cliff Run Crew’s fifth-anniversary run Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Dallas
Michael Cuviello/Dallas Morning News
An Oak Cliff Run Crew participant smiles and gestures toward the camera during the group’s fifth-anniversary run Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Dallas.
Michael Cuviello/Dallas Morning News
At first, people trickled in: eight or 10 runners became 12, then 20. The founders kept returning each week and inviting more people.
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“Four of us and more of us,” they began saying.
The group now averages 200 to 250 participants each week, according to its founders.
Thursday’s fifth-anniversary celebration began at Herby’s Burgers in Oak Cliff’s Elmwood neighborhood. After the run, participants gathered for burgers, running-shoe demonstrations and recovery equipment provided through the crew’s partnerships.
For co-founder Patrick Kleineberg, the turnout showed what can happen when people keep showing up for one another.
“It feels a little surreal, a little unreal,” he said. “But we couldn’t have done it without the people that got us here.”
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They built what they could not find
From left, Ian Shoff, Patrick Kleineberg and Vincent Holland, three of Oak Cliff Run Crew’s four co-founders, stand outside Herby’s Burgers before the crew’s fifth-anniversary run Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Dallas. Co-founder Haley Renison is not pictured.
Michael Cuviello/Dallas Morning News
Kleineberg, Vincent Holland, Ian Shoff and Haley Renison founded the crew Aug. 5, 2021, as Dallas was emerging from the isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The four met at Tribal All Day Cafe in Bishop Arts. Holland and Renison worked there. Kleineberg and Shoff arrived separately as customers, each looking for a place where they could become a regular and reconnect with people.
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Within months, the four had become friends and discovered that each had a running background.
“We wanted community,” Kleineberg said. “We didn’t see what we were looking for, so we said, ‘Why don’t we just start it ourselves?’”
Growth came one invitation at a time. The founders recruited friends and approached people they met at neighborhood bars. Within about two years, weekly attendance had reached 50 to 70 runners. A broader social-running boom helped push participation into the hundreds beginning in 2024.
Kleineberg said the crew’s foundation was consistency. At least one of the four founders has attended every Thursday run for five years.
“That’s five years of my life on Thursdays,” said Kleineberg, 38. “I don’t really have anything else going on Thursdays except for this.”
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Holland said none of the founders anticipated what their weekly gathering would become. At one point, nearly 600 people participated in a single run, he said.
“It would be astonishing,” Holland said of what he would have thought five years ago. “We were literally just doing it for us four.”
The founders consider the range of people who feel welcome more important than the size of the crowd.
“We have fought tooth and nail from the beginning to make sure anybody feels like they can be here at any level, any pace,” Holland said.
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‘All faces, all paces’
Oak Cliff Run Crew participants talk as they move along the group’s fifth-anniversary route Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Dallas.
Michael Cuviello/Dallas Morning News
The crew’s official motto is “All faces, all paces.”
Some members train for marathons. Others jog, alternate between running and walking or walk the entire route. One regular uses a wheelchair and sometimes rolls past participants who are walking, Kleineberg said.
That range is intentional. Some running groups say all paces are welcome, Kleineberg said, only for their fastest members to take off and leave beginners wondering whether they belong.
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“If you come to our runs on Thursdays, it really shows,” he said. “Anyone who is just walking, to the people who take off fast.”
There are no membership fees or tryouts. Participants complete a waiver and show up.
“If you want to walk a couple miles, that’s cool,” Shoff said. “If you want to jog-walk, whatever stage you’re at, do that. If you want to run a five-minute pace for three miles, go do that, too.”
Shoff said running with a group offers accountability that solitary miles cannot. On a near-100-degree evening when going outside is the last thing a runner wants to do, he knows friends will be waiting.
The group also provides visibility and safety, particularly after dark.
“I know there’s going to be 300 of my friends here,” Shoff said. “If something goes awry, I’ve got people around me.”
For many participants, the relationships matter more than pace or finishing time.
Sarah Woynicz joined shortly after moving to Dallas from Atlanta nearly two years ago. She arrived in the city at 7 p.m. on a Saturday. By 7 the next morning, she was running with a group of strangers.
She wanted to meet people and find a place in her new city. She has since brought her parents to walk a Thursday route when they visited.
“There’s something special when you’re in the middle of your week, with everything that everybody’s got going on, and you have the chance to all come together and just be with one another,” Woynicz said.
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‘Push and pull’
Miranda Marquez, who has run with Oak Cliff Run Crew for nearly four years, poses before the group’s fifth-anniversary run Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, outside Herby’s Burgers in Dallas.
Michael Cuviello/Dallas Morning News
Miranda Marquez, who has participated for about 3½ years, said friends push one another through difficult workouts and long, hot summers.
“It’s kind of like this gravity, this push and pull,” she said. “You’re pulling me. I’m pushing you.”
Those relationships extend beyond the routes. Members have supported one another through deaths in their families and other struggles. Kleineberg said some participants who moved away later returned to Dallas after failing to find the same sense of belonging elsewhere.
That is why one of the crew’s catchphrases is “Never mind running.”
“The running part really is not the important part,” Kleineberg said. “It’s about seeing people get better and being with people when they deal with the loss of family in their life. It’s showing up for them when they need people to show up.”
Organizers provide water during the North Texas summer and urge participants to hydrate throughout the week, dress appropriately and slow down when their bodies tell them to. Kleineberg advises beginners to alternate running and walking for about 30 minutes without worrying about pace or distance.
“We’re not out here to win the Super Bowl,” he said. “If you’re feeling like you need to slow down, slow down, and help the people next to you.”
The nonprofit holds free social runs at 7 p.m. Thursdays, with 2-mile and 3.2-mile routes. Sunday long runs begin at 7 a.m. and offer 5-, 10- and 15-mile routes. Runs both days start at 1406 N. Zang Blvd. near Oak Cliff Founders Park. More information is available on the Oak Cliff Run Crew website.
Five years after people first began trickling in, hundreds were there Thursday to push one another through the finish.
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Two Oak Cliff Run Crew participants exchange a high-five during the group’s fifth-anniversary run Thursday, Aug. 6, 2026, in Dallas.
Michael Cuviello/Dallas Morning News
For Kleineberg, however, the anniversary was a milestone, not a culmination.
“It feels really good,” he said, “but it’s not, by any means, a finish line.”