Have you ever seen a group of students running away from Mabee Dining Hall at 7 a.m.? That would be the Trinity University Run Club (TURC).
The run club has been revived and is open to anyone to join. They can be seen running around San Antonio, at the Trinity track and around community runs.
Cael Ferland, sophomore accounting major, took over as the president of TURC this semester. He described his decision to revive the club.
“There was a Trinity running club I think around 2020, during COVID. When all the people graduated from that one, the club kind of still existed. It’s just nobody was running it, so I just brought it back this last year,” Ferland said.
Club members use GroupMe to plan runs and share information about events and experiences. The makeup of each meeting varies, and every member can run at their own pace.
“Most of the time we run as a big group, but sometimes we’ll split off with some faster people going faster paces or longer [runs], and other times we’ll have slower groups or we’ll split up,” Ferland said.
The club is open to all levels of experience. Grant Peterson, sophomore engineering major, shared why he attends the club.
“I enjoy attending [TURC] because it allows me the opportunity to get out and explore off campus while giving me a good way to exercise and hang out with the people that come,” Peterson said.
Some members of TURC also use meetings to improve competitively. Morgan Powers, sophomore computer science major, discussed how he found TURC as an alternative to cross country.
“I wanted to have people to run with and knew that many other universities had quasi-competitive running clubs, so I figured this solution ought to work, and here we are,” Powers said. “The club is at present very casual, though there is also a subgroup forming that is more serious about getting faster. Everyone’s just there to hang out and exercise.”
TURC provides a community component for exercising and getting you up and running. Powers described the benefits of running in this community that are unique to the club.
“While running on my own is also fun, it can be somewhat boring and monotonous. Running with friends provides some challenge and prevents the exercise from getting stale,” Powers said.
TURC has also participated in community 5Ks and fun runs. On Sept. 8, members of the club ran the 17th annual SNIPSA 5K Race for the Rescues.
“We actually had one of our members get second overall in the race and first for his age group. We had a couple other Trinity students show up and do pretty well,” Ferland said.
