By Aidan McNeely
In 2024, William Peace University students Josh Eatmon, Nathan Cochran, and Smith Jolly launched a Raleigh run club called Stride2Strive, to create a fitness-focused community where runners of all levels connect, grow, and support one another.
It all started with a 2024 spring trip to Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The three students began to use their skills to think of a way to start a business by utilizing a hobby they were extremely passionate about. Junior business administration major and player on the WPU soccer team Nathan Cochran, talked about the origin of the club.
“We had a fun spring break trip, and we were kind of thinking about the big picture of jobs and aligning our mindset with entrepreneurial ideas,” said Cochran. “It’s never too early to get started, and it’s about just taking that big risk to actually create something and make it come to life, so we tried to think of a good way to bring people together, and there’s no better way than through fitness.”
Smith Jolly, a junior and business administration major at WPU added on to Nathan’s point.
“We all three wanted a community in Raleigh,” said Jolly. “We all wanted to become healthier and have healthier goals, and promote our goals to other people and just create a whole community around that.”
Photo by Josh Eatmon
Josh Eatmon, also a junior business administration major and player on the WPU soccer team noted the run club’s evolution.
“The run club has evolved to being an idea on a car ride, a long car ride, where we were writing down in a notebook, names of a club, and then wanting to, like, figure out what we stood for, and we narrowed it down out of like, 50 names, it just kind of connected into Stride2Strive,” said Eatmon. “It evolved from an idea between three people, and we’ve turned it into a club that can show up on a race day [2025 Peace Community 5K] and place the first five participants all subbing under 19 minutes, and only seven people to do so.”
In the beginning, the three struggled to get people to the early morning 8 a.m. runs on Wednesdays and Saturdays. However, it slowly cultivated in the span of a year to a group that currently wants to better themselves, with a larger population, by connecting over striving for their goals with maximum intention.
Jolly spoke about one of the main challenges in the first year for the run club.
“I think the first couple runs, we had a big group of people because it was new, and everybody was excited about it, and then it started slowing down, especially for Wednesday runs, we only had like five people coming, and we still do,” said Jolly. “I think the challenge is just maintaining everybody and getting everybody to come back on a weekly basis, especially with the times that we have and everybody’s schedules being tight.”
To address the attendance issue, the three had to think of an incentive that would make runners more likely to come. They wanted to be unique compared to every other run club, so that they would stand out. They began to use bagels, cream cheese, and coffee to connect over some food after the runs.
Eatmon is looking to the future, and wants to develop the run club even further to make the run club have even more unique benefits compared to run clubs nationwide.
“We’re trying to reach mainly college students, and a lot of them we still haven’t reached because some of them go out on Friday night and don’t go to bed until 2 a.m.,” said Eatmon. “Therefore, I feel like, the incentive has to be a little greater, and that’s why we want to, yes, continue doing bagels, but also bring back doing waters and bananas and and later we want to bring a sauna and ice baths out there and just level up the environment and the experience of coming to the run.”
“Yes, it’s going to be hard waking up at 8 a.m., but give it 30 minutes after eight, by 8:30 a.m. you’re going to be in a sauna and ice bath in totally different field than when you were getting up out of your bed at 7:50 a.m. to hike over to the run club,” said Eatmon.
The group loves the community that has been built over the past year and wants to continue to include all types of categories of people including runners, joggers, walkers, etc.
“We are very inclusive of everybody that appears at the run club, and we make sure that everybody feels included and we talk to everybody, and have a conversation with everybody, and that’s not just before the run, that’s after the run, during the run and everything, and just keeping the community, because that’s really what we wanted, was to create a run community,” said Jolly. “And it can’t be a community if we’re all not talking to each other.”
“We welcome all walkers, joggers and runners and we do a really good job emphasizing that no one gets left behind,” said Cochran. “If there are some people who struggle or are a little behind others, we wait for them to finish, and we just encourage them along the way and make them know that they’re not alone, and we’re all doing this together, which makes it way easier than running by yourself.”
Stride2Strive run club, runs on Wednesday afternoons at various times, starting on WPU campus and Saturday mornings at 8 a.m. in the gravel parking lot next to Jubala Coffee on Hillsborough St. Both run loops are approximately three miles in length. A website is in the works, but anyone can get involved or find more information on the Stride2Strive Instagram.
“I love our Run Club, and it’s great, and everyone needs to come to it, because it is going to turn into an experience soon, and not just a normal run club,” said Jolly. “Everybody has fun every run, and everybody loves each other.”