TNU Running Club Gains Momentum as Students Build Community Through Weekend Runs

By Keturah Tobias
Senior Reporter

Charity Mugge, sophomore class president of the SGA, created the TNU Running Club last semester as an activity for friends to run together, and it has slowly gained more active members each weekend. The club is not yet official on Trevecca’s campus, and it is a gathering of students who enjoy running various distances.

Students meet every Saturday morning and carpool to parks such as Shelby Park and Mill Creek, and run whatever mileage is comfortable for everyone. Mugge wants to consistently begin each meeting with devotionals.

“It’s a very random assortment of people. Now we have a bigger group and some of them walk, which is very fun,” said Mugge. “There’s a walking group that starts with us, but then we’ll separate from them. And then, three to five of us just go around different trails and run. It’s very fun.” 

After the run, the group goes to the dining hall and gets breakfast together.  

Mugge started her running career in high school as a freshman. She ran for one year. Everyone on her team got invited to the banquet at the end of the year to receive a varsity letter, and she was the only one not to receive one. 

“I was the worst person on the team. So I hated running after that, not because of not getting a letter, but because I was an awful runner. I trained every day, and I still just sucked. I just didn’t really enjoy it,” said Mugge.

Mugge went on a run with one of her friends last year on New Year’s Day and really enjoyed it. During the summer, she went through a lot of emotional life changes and got pushed into running again. 

“I feel like I need to move my body to feel good and do well socially, emotionally, and academically,” said Mugge. 

Mugge has seen the changes running consistently has done for her life, such as having clearer mental clarity, better sleep and better digestion. She has overall experienced many positive benefits of running.  She looks forward to running because of the mental clarity she feels afterwards. Mugge refers to the feeling as “healthy pain”, and it reminds her that she is getting stronger actively. 

 Mugge said the running club has helped bridge the community by bringing together people from different backgrounds.

 “I was talking last semester to Tim Gaines, one of the religion department professors, about trying to make deeper friendships here, but feeling like I was hitting a lot of blocks and not really knowing how to get closer to people. His advice was to do hard things with people that like hard things,” said Mugge.

 She is determined to make the running club official next semester. The club would benefit from budget money from the school to buy matching gear for the members. It could even help for gas being used to drive to parks. 

 “We do meet weekly and there is a consistent basis of the group of people that come every weekend. Making it an official club would help publicize it more to the school to get more people involved. I know there are a lot of people on our campus that want to be more active, ” said Mugge. 

 Will Mattes, a member of the running club, has attended the weekly runs consistently and was one of the first people invited by Mugge when the club first started. 

 “In the beginning, it was just to stay in shape. Now it’s more mental. It’s less about running and more about social time,” said Mattes. 

 Mattes is now practicing through the run club to train for the Rock and Roll marathon next year in April.

 “Charity is very good at reaching out. I feel like everyone’s in the loop about what’s going on already, but she is really good at organizing everything and setting times and making sure people know where they are going,” said Mattes.