GNRC celebrates 20 years

The Greater Neponset Running Club (GNRC) will be celebrating its 20th year on Saturday, June 6 at the Norwood Town Common starting at 7:30 a.m.

The run will be a quick three-miles for current and past members to hang out and catch up. Organizer Jeff Weidenaar said the idea is to just get together and celebrate the club.

“It’s kind of fashioned after something we do every Thanksgiving, which is we get together at the Town Common and just do a little three-mile run and head over to the Irish Heaven for drinks,” he said. “We won’t be having drinks this time around, just breakfast on the Common.”

Weidenaar said they have almost 50 runners signed up so far.

“It’s all hands on deck, we’re reaching out to everybody and anybody who’s run with us before to get them to come out and run,” he said. “It’s just a celebratory event for us.”

Weidenaar said the group started in 2006 as the Greater Norwood Running Club.

“We changed the name at some point because we were drawing from the surrounding communities and we didn’t want it to be strictly Norwood focused,” he said. “We just subbed out Norwood for Neponset.”

The group organizes runs almost every day of the week and helps members to train for marathons and races. Weidenaar said while the group’s never gotten too big, it’s still around after 20 years, which is definitely an accomplishment as far as running clubs go.

“We’ve never been a gigantic club, but we’ve been running together lots of years, and people drop off, then come and join, come back, and we’ve always maintained a nice mid-sized club,” he said. “We haven’t outgrown our traditions. Like every month we have breakfast at a member’s house and we haven’t gotten to the point where we’re busting out of somebody’s house.”

Weidenaar was one of the club’s founding members, but he said Michael Gilio really got things together.

“Mike and a few other original members used to run with a club called Hurtin’ for Certain, which is known for being ex-collegiate runners,” he said. “They’re fast and they used to run out of Xaverian, and for a variety of reasons we decided we needed our own group. And so Mike was the one who came up with the idea to start with and he’s still plugging along. He’s had a couple of knee replacements, but he’s still plugging along.”

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Weidenaar said the breakfast will be on the Central Street Green, kept limited to pedestrians in the warmer months, after the race from the Norwood Sunrise Cafe.

“And a few of us might wander over to the Irish Heaven after breakfast, as we are wont to do,” he said. “But we’re meeting at 7:30, do our three-mile run, and then head to the Sunrise for breakfast and bring it over to the Common at the picnic tables.”

Weidenaar said the event is more geared to former members, but they wouldn’t turn away any new recruits either.

“If somebody wanted to come join us, the more the merrier,” he said. “We’re happy to have people join.”

For more information on the club, go to www.gnrcrunners.org