Mat-Su Running Club looking for beginner and current runners for 2022 season

Leaders of a Valley-based nonprofit running club are getting ready to kick off their annual season and looking for new and returning members to join them.

The Mat-Su Running Club provides weekly planned track workouts, focused coaching and a friendly atmosphere for runners of all backgrounds and abilities, leaders said. Founded in the mid-1990s as the MatSu Women’s Running Club, the group has since become co-ed.

“I see the club as just a community activity as a whole,” said Heidi Quinn, the club’s president. “It’s really for anyone who has an interest in picking up a running habit and a routine. … It provides a good base for people to work on creating some goals from there.”

The club meets for coached workouts Tuesdays at 6 p.m. at Colony High School April through early August, with most of those runs occurring on the track. Runners are organized into pace groups so they can work on timing goals with other runners with similar goals. And on Thursdays starting in mid-May, dependent on conditions, a group also meets to run local trails.

The goal, said Quinn, is for runners to grow stronger, more confident and more fit over the course of the season.

The club has three dedicated coaches: Rhonda Knopp, Norm Rousey, and Tracen Knopp. Coaching, for them, is a family affair. Rousey is Rhonda Knopp’s brother, and Tracen Knopp, a top-tier Alaska mountain runner who holds the Resurrection Pass 50-miler course record at 6 hours, 9 minutes,16 seconds, is her son.

Returning members will enjoy the club’s revamped spring race event. In the past, the club partnered with Palmer’s Who Let the Girls Out event, hosting a Friday evening 5k race. For 2022 the running club is instead taking over the Valley Thaw Out event from Happy Malamute Running. The race will be on the morning of Saturday, April 30 and will include 5k, 10k and half-marathon distances, starting from Pyrah’s Pioneer Peak Farm on Bodenburg Loop.

“This opportunity opened for us to take over this great race series that matches the objectives of the club and is an opportunity to bring more runners in from outside the Valley for a bigger race,” Quinn said.

In addition to the adult workouts, the club offers a youth running program June through July. Those workouts are on Tuesdays at 4:30 pm for most kids, with older teens running at 6 p.m.

While seasoned runners will find plenty of benefit from spending time doing speed work on a track, the club is especially useful for new runners who are nervous about getting started or just aren’t sure how to make it happen. It’s with those users in mind that Knopp annually hosts both an informational meeting before the season starts and a two-night beginners clinic, complete with a friendly classroom session on the how-tos of running and an evening on the track just to get comfortable.

“We’re really trying to incorporate everyone in the community,” Quinn said. “We really want to spread that running is for everyone. … We want to dispel that myth that you have to be a certain pace or a certain fitness level.”

Regular season club membership is $140, a fee which helps cover coaching time, insurance and other group costs.

The regular season starts April 19.

The beginners clinic will be held April 12 and 14 and is $40. The Junior Group is $100, with a $25 discount for more than one child from a family.

For more information or to join the club, visit MatSuRunningClub.org.