: Durango Running Club members Nate Christiansen, front, Brendan Trimboli, and Leah Fein head down Animas Mountain during a Tuesday morning training run. DRC has picked up where Durango Motorless Transit left off, promoting the sport and engaging the local running community while keeping pace with the latest running trends./Photo by Steve Eginoire

Still running strong

Durango Running Club takes the lead in ever-evolving local running scene

by Page Buono

If it seems like there’s more people pounding local pavement and paths lately, it could be more than your imagination. According to Running USA, a nonprofit organization dedicated to furthering the sport, the number of runners competing in organized events has more than doubled since 2000. Bear in mind this doesn’t include the casual enthusiast who’s discovered the simple pleasures of tossing on some tennies and hitting the trail. As usual, Durango, has embraced the sport’s evolution, acting as a microcosm of national trends.

Durango Motorless Transit (DMT), Durango’s original running club, started back in the late 1990s as a way for runners to get together for a run and socialize over a beer afterward. Over the next 15 years, DMT organized and directed some of Durango’s most popular runs: The Steamworks Half Marathon, The Animas Mug Run and The Durango Narrow Gage 10 Mile, to name a few.

When Brett Sublett, avid ultra runner and manager of Backcountry Experience, moved to Durango 10 years ago, Mark Witkes was the president of DMT. 

 “(DMT) is what it is because of his passion and energy,” Sublett said.

Witkes passed away in 2006, leaving his legacy in the form of a scholarship that allows local athletes to attend Fort Lewis College to pursue their dream of competing in collegiate cross-country.

Both the scholarship and running club continue, but as the sport has evolved, so has the organization.

Trimboli laces up his sneaks. He founded “SCRUD” (Southern Coloradoans Running Ultra Distances) as a way to meet other trail and ultra-runners. Eventually SCRUD and DMT joined forces to form the Durango Running Club./Photo by Steve Eginoire

Last year, Sublett and DMT joined forces to put on the first co-sponsored Wednesday night Trail Run. When 65 people showed up, they were blown away.

While DMT had laid a strong foundation of races and a platform for the running community, new participants and a shift toward trail and ultra-running has evolved the sport.

“It’s great to have new people and new energy. You always need fresh blood, but this is possible because of the solid core of original developers,” Sublett said. “Those guys organized the first real running community here in Durango.”

Younger runners like Brendan Trimboli spurred the transition. Trimboli moved to Durango a few years ago with a passion for trail running, but he found other runners were, as they often notoriously are, elusive.

“I’ve always been a runner, and when I got to Durango three years ago, I was like ‘this is a trail runner’s paradise, but where are all the runners?’”

Over time, he started to meet them but found a lot of them kept to themselves, though not without a desire to socialize.

“I found that there was a desire amongst the runners to connect outside of runs – to grab a beer,” he said.

Modeled after a group he was part of in Colorado Springs, Trimboli started an unofficial network via Facebook to connect trail and ultra-runners.

“SCRUD” – Southern Coloradoans Running Ultra Distances – caught on quickly, and within a year there were more than 50 people involved.

Over the last two years, SCRUD and DMT have been in conversation about whether or not Durango needed two running groups, despite some different interests.

It was decided that Durango is a small enough community to support one running club, and the 4 two morphed into the Durango Running Club –a quazi-organized community of runners.

“We don’t want people to see it as an exclusive group,” said Trimboli, who serves as the web manager for the new group. “We see ourselves as organizers, and we’re just trying to create venues and opportunities for people to learn more about running, get more involved in running and meet other people who run.”

The group’s board, made up of five, has shifted only slightly from the DMT board of the last couple years. Jill Badalati remains the president; Vic Rudolph the treasurer; Erica Michaud membership coordinator; and Ernie Garcia in Media Relations. Trimboli is the only new addition as the website manager.

“The beauty of DRC is that everyone comes from such a different background – you’ve got folks just out of high school, you’ve got senior citizens, people with high income and those with low, but we all share this one thing in common, which is the love of running and being outside,” Trimboli said.

For Steve Collins, who came to running later in life at 38 years old, the on-foot pursuit has changed his life.

“I traded one addiction for the other,” Collins said. “I quit smoking and started running, and I haven’t looked back.”

Collins said it all blurs together, but the evolution from his first 5K to his new passion for ultra-runs largely took place on the stage built by DMT.

In addition to a shift toward more trail running, Trimboli hopes to include more educational and informational events.

In that vein, Durango Running Club along with Backcountry and Ska will be hosting a film screening of “Running the Edge” on Fri., May 22, at the Smiley Building. The short documentary about the fastest run of the Colorado Trail will also serve as a fundraiser for Trails 2000.

And, for the second year, Backcountry will partner with DRC (last year DMT), to launch the Wednesday night Trail Runs on April 16. The runs, which are open to the public, will continue every Wednesday through October.

“The Wednesday night runs invite lots of people. It’s a great atmosphere that is nonintimidating and noncompetitive,” Sublett said. “You’ll get people out there wanting to hammer out 10 miles as quick as possible, and other people who just want to take their dog out to run a mile and get back for beer.”

For Sublett, watching runners connect on their favorite places and planning runs with people who were previously strangers is his favorite part of the whole thing.

Upcoming DRC events - Sun., April 6, 10k for Books ‘n’ Things, to benefit the Fort Lewis College Exercise Science Scholarship fund, 10 a.m. - 12 noon, Three Springs - Wed., April 16, First Wednesday Night Trail Run of the season. Kick-off party at Backcountry Experience, 5:30 – 7:30 p.m. - Sat., April 19, Spirit Runners 5k and 1 mile, 9 - 11 a.m. Durango High School - Sat., April 26, Earth Day 5k, 11 a.m. - 1 p.m. - Sun., May 11, Mother’s Day Telegraph run, 10k and 5k, 9 a.m. - noon - Fri., May 22, “Running the Edge” film screening to benefit Trails 2000, 7 – 8:30 p.m., Smiley Building - Sun., May 25, Narrow Gauge 10k & 4 mile run, 8 a.m. - 12 noon, Santa Rita Park - Sat., June 7, Steamworks Half Marathon

Leah Fein, who has been running for more than 20 years, said SCRUD and DRC have helped her make running a more social event. Self-described as shy, Fein said she was a solo runner until about three years ago when she started connecting with other Durango runners. Strangely though, those connections were being made at races outside of Durango.

DRC events help to make that connection happen here in town, so local runners can train together and provide support. 

“I want people to find value in what the club provides – both in terms of organizing special events but also that members benefit from discounts provided by local businesses as well as discounts on some local races,” Trimboli said.

DRC membership is not required for events, but is encouraged for those who participate regularly. An annual membership is $20.

“The important thing is where that money goes,” Trimboli said.  “We use the funds for equipment at local races, as well as loan out to races that aren’t DRC directed.”

Additionally, Trimboli said a significant portion of funds raised go to the Mark Witkes Memorial Scholarship Fund. All Durango Running Club races support various organizations – Humane Society, Manna Soup Kitchen, and Search and Rescue, to name a few.

The running club is designed to support and encourage runners of all persuasions and to continue to grow the events that foster that community. Additionally, both Sublett and Trimboli emphasized DRC’s desire to give back to the community by supporting local nonprofits through fundraising at races, as well as getting the running community more involved in things like trail maintenance through Trails 2000.

“It’s a great community of all ages,” Collins said, commenting on his admiration for a group of runners 70 years and older who run together on Saturday mornings.

“To me, that’s winning,” he said. “If I can still run into my seventies and eighties, I’ve won the race.”

For more information, go to www.durangorunningclub.org.