Youth Running With Passion

About Founder Cole Brommer and how it all started 

Being a kid, it’s harder than you think to start a website and a club that's growing in popularity around Chatham.  Luckily some of my best friends helped in expanding the club. So I’m going to tell you the journey from day one. When I had the idea my friend Gavin Romano thought I was crazy. He said “Why would we run for fun… go ask Austin Marchetti.”  At the beginning Austin was pumped, he thought it would be easy.  I will give him credit, everyone thought it would be easy, and he is the best athlete in the bunch.  

Later that week we had our first run.  Believe it or not our first run was only .58 miles! We stopped multiple times to catch our breath, side stickers and cramps.  Our pace was around 10 minutes a mile. We were crushed!  I thought from day one I would be able to run a marathon.  This is when I realized I had to work harder.  Then we ran and ran, to this day I push my team as hard as possible, if you ask them they would say I push them too hard.  But this came all the way in 1944 when my grandpa was born.  He was an elite runner and to this day he still does speed walking. Then when my dad was born he was an elite runner.  I thought that means I’m instantly a great runner too, but I have to work hard to achieve my goals just like my grandpa and dad. 

But back to the story, this is when we signed up for a four mile race.  Oh boy, we had never ran over 2.3 miles!  My mom went crazy, she was telling me to do the 1 mile fun run.  I knew if we just ran 1 mile, we would have felt like we just took the easy way out.  I also knew at that point no way we were ready for four miles and that would crush the club confidence and likely hood to continue to run.  After I told everyone about the race my two other friends Owen Miller and Jack Hogan joined.  They were a great addition to the team.  They had very opposite running traits that matched their personality in real life.  It reminds me of the time that Owen was walking around minding his business when this kid came up to him and kicked him in in the back of the foot.  This was the day we where expecting to do a long run and on long runs my number one rule is don’t sprint off the start.  Like always, Owen sprints off the start but I would expect him to slow down but he proved me wrong and is in front of everyone the whole time. This is why I put youth running with passion in the home screen,  I did it because of Owen.  Jack was a great runner because it did not matter what happened at school or the day before or losing in a lacrosse game. Every day he showed up and ran to the best of his ability and did not complain (unlike some others!).  For the next couple weeks we were doing great, everyone ran when they could and ran very well even if they had sports and school work.  Everyone was pumped for the big race, but I was still not sure we were ready.  It was not easy to run three times a week and about 2 miles every time.  This might not sound like a lot to you, but ‘we are only 10 years old’ like Austin says when I want to run the long way.  But we were on a roll and this was because of Gavin, he showed up every time and ran.  He might not be the fastest in the club, but he worked the hardest and deserved to run the four miles.  

We had one week to go until race day, the last run to the race was a fluke.  We had only ran 1.5 miles and there was lots of complaining, but we are all kids and I could tell that we were very nervous.  Then it was race day it was just me, Owen and Gavin. I was full of nerves, but Gavin and Owen seemed fine and were passing the baseball when we picked them up. When we got to the race we saw little kids with medals, we could have been there doing the one mile fun run. But no, we had to prove ourselves.  When we heard the beep we were off.  Of course Owen sprinted at the beginning, but me and Gavin were right next to each other for the whole race.  We had the same speed and we both played a game to get high fives with everyone.  I got 2  police officers and one dad.  When we out there we were just ourselves having fun like usual.  This got my mind of the race and helped Gavin a lot too.  Owen was struggling and my dad went back to help him, this race was not easy!  I felt great at the end and was running fast.  I had finished the race 1st place for 10 years old.  Gavin was right behind me.  I could not even feel my legs.  It was awesome, but later that day we were playing games like we always do.  We had fun like all kids should have.  Hope you can join us for practices and races. I hope this inspired you.  

sincerely,                   

Cole