Trento Running Club

On a Wednesday night at the end of winter 2020, P, F and I went out for a run, at a certain point we looked at each other and said: “fuck, it’s cool to run together, it would be nice to create a group and meet every Wednesday night for a few kilometers together.” During that night the Wednesday Something Club was born, which after a few months became TRC. The three of us have never run together since then.

How would you define the attitude of TRC?
Simple, genuine… punk. A “non-club club”, without cards, social dinners and something like that, and in which only the desire to be together to share beers and kilometers counts. After all, it takes very little: a pair of shoes, the right mindset and a lot of heart. We cultivate the sense of community also through our second skin: we print t-shirts strictly in cotton and handmade by Frammenti, a local artisan screen printing. The logos are inspired by the tradition of American ultrarunning, the shirts are very limited (like our money) and are strictly reserved for us and our friends, and if something is left over, it is immediately reinvested in other t-shirts. If anyone would like to get a shirt, just ask. Where? Obviously we meet each other around, since the TRC does not have an address, an account, a site. And let’s not forget the sacred stickers, which are strictly reserved for finishers.

How do you join the Club?
We do not accept self-nominations, it just happens. Nobody cares if one is an elite athlete or if he has just started running, if his goal is to run 10km or 100 miles or whatever. What matters in the Club is the respect for running, for the environment in which it is practiced and for other runners. So I would say it is an inclusive group. Joining the Club is relatively simple: just meet one of the members on the routes (or more likely at the pub), get added to the WhatsApp group and undergo the initiation rite by coming to run a loop. After that it depends exclusively on the willingness to do and to be part of the TRC, demonstrating day after day the dedication to the Club, trying to be as active as possible in supporting the community to which you belong. The TRC is nothing more than a group of runners who, sharing the same attitude, have inevitably become friends.

“I was in Marzola with a friend and my girlfriend when I saw someone running down towards the city, thin and shirtless, as if the had been running in the woods for a week. I told my girlfriend: he has to be a serious runner. She was already tired of listening to me talking about running, so she immediately saw the opportunity to find me a trail running friend. We drove into town and saw the guy again, as he stood in line for ice cream. My girlfriend got out of the car, offered him an ice cream and told him about me, while I waited in the car. Then he came over and we talked about trail running for a minute. Before leaving he invited me to run on a loop in the mountains after a few weeks. That loop nearly killed me. After the race he invited me to join the Trento Running Club.”

“A few days after a nice run along Translagorai, I find myself having beer with some friends at Uva e Menta. Among these there was also F, whom I had already met. Then came the idea of going running together, trying to aggregate friends who frequent the magical woods around Trento. And we immediately got hooked. Total informality, you go out to stay in the woods and howl at the moon. Auuuuuuuuuu!”

“It is not about running. It is not about being in a club. It is not because you are from Trento. It is a broader concept. It is about being together and carrying on ideas. To share beautiful things, improve and do simple things together.”

M, how did you approach to take pictures at TRC?
It was the right thing for me to do in that moment.