Trail lovers, it’s time to rejoice.
Some ideas start on a trail. Muster started on several of them — the kind of long runs where conversation goes deep, plans get hatched, and hunger becomes serious by the end.
Chef Kate De Lautour and Physiotherapist Jen Mackie have been trail running together long enough to know what makes a good day out: movement that challenges you, scenery that earns its keep, and food that genuinely rewards the effort. Muster is what happened when they decided to stop talking about it and just build it.
At its heart, Muster is an outdoor experience that refuses to be defined by pace. There are no podiums, no timing chips, no pressure to perform. What there is: a route that takes you somewhere worth going, a group of people who showed up for the same reason you did, and a chef-curated feast waiting at the end of it. Everybody is welcome. Every pace is the right pace.
The format is simple. You move through landscape — on foot, at whatever speed suits you — and then you eat. Not a sausage sizzle. Not a sandwich from a chilly bin. Kate designs menus that treat the finish as an occasion: seasonal, considered, and built to be shared around a table (or a trestle, or a paddock gate — the setting changes, the quality doesn’t).
That combination — genuine physical experience followed by genuine food — is harder to find than it should be. Most events prioritise the movement and offer the meal as an afterthought. Muster flips that logic. Both things matter. Both things are done properly.
The result is something that sits outside easy categories. It’s not a race. It’s not a retreat. It’s not a dinner party, though it sometimes feels like one by the end. It’s a day that earns its food and shares it well — with the kind of people who tend to show up when you put trail running (or walking) and a good meal in the same sentence.
Come hungry. Leave well fed, in every sense.
Muster — musternz.co.nz
