Kindleberger 5k Run/Walk

The Kindleberger 5K Run/Walk starts Festival Day at 7:30 a.m. in Lower Kindleberger Park in Parchment, Michigan. It is a 5K run and fitness walk tied to the Kindleberger Summer Festival of the Performing Arts, so the field is built for families, walkers, first-timers, club runners, and faster racers sharing the same morning. Hundreds of people of different ages and abilities join, and the awards go beyond the overall men's and women's winners, with age-group prizes running from 9 and under through 70 and over. The course begins in Kindleberger Park, heads through the tree-lined streets of Parchment, and returns to a finish in lower Kindleberger Park, where runners and walkers are already next to the festival. The event sits inside a performing-arts festival with more than four decades behind it, and even the race shirts connect to the festival theatre production. Packet pickup, course marshals, water stations, setup, teardown, medals, and parking at Parchment Middle School give it the feel of a local volunteer-run festival race rather than a standalone road event.