New Members | rosecityrunners

New Members Welcome

Barb Rushman - New Member Chair

Patrick Sweeney (New Providence) - more info to come.

Ada Mahon (Chatham)

I plan to join you and the team this Saturday at 8:30am unless something last minute comes up. I'm looking forward to meeting the team and getting to know everyone. Below is a quick introduction of myself.

Ada is married and is a working mom to two boys; Brandon is 12 and Ryan is 6. She’s a senior product specialist at Bank of America. The Mahons moved to Chatham about 10 years ago. Ada love to garden and planted about 500 spring bulbs last fall. She feels rewarded to see them bloom and is already thinking about planting more later in the year. Her son, Brandon, joined the track team this year and had his first meet recently, Ada was inspired by his willingness to try something different so decided to sign up for the club. Currently Ada is running a mile but hopes with the club’s support she can run a 5K and build up to a 1/2 of marathon down the line!

Diana Danca (Madison)

Diana just moved to Madison late March, but from neighboring Mendham, so she’s somewhat familiar with the town. She is an attorney and work for a law firm in NYC, single and no children. Diana often run the trails in Loantaka Park and is looking forward to running with a group. Photo to come.

Katarina Erlandsson (Madison)

Katarina is excited to join! She says we seems to be a great community, with a long history. She’s new to the area, moved to Madison with her family (husband, 2.5-year-old daughter, and cat) last fall, from NYC (where she’s lived since 1996). She finds it beautiful here, and couldn't be happier with their decision to relocate to Madison.

Katarina has spent the last eight years working with runners & tri-athletes in NYC as a physical therapist, getting injured runners ready to race again. She’s recently started her own concierge PT service out of Madison, doing in-home visits, so she can continue her work here, rather than in NYC.

She’s gotten back into running over the last 6 months, after a bit of a break. She’s never belonged to a running club before, but knows how helpful it is in so many ways, to run with others.

She says she’s much slower than she used to be! Historically, she ran so that she could stay fit for her other sports: soccer and boxing. Her younger self ran a 10 K at an 8:45 min/mile pace. Now she’d like to do a 10 K at about a 10 min mile pace and to do a 5 K at a 9 min/mile pace. Katarina has already made it out on Saturday and is a good fit for the club!

Fang Schmitz (New Providence)

Fang (pronounced Fan) is married and has 2 kids, 19 and 14. She is working as a software developer in Matrix, Broadridge Financial. She has been working from home even before the pandemic. Most of her coworkers are in Denver, and there are dozens in the NY office.

Fang picked up running in 2009 because her company was entering a Corporate Challenge team in the city. It took her more than 6 months to finally love it. When she gets anxious or sad or uneasy, she always put the shoes on and goes out for a run. It just calms her down and gives her energy. At the beginning, she did some races. but nowadays, she just run without much of a goal.

Her hobbies are simple: running, swimming, gym, hiking. Most of her time is just dealing with work, taking care of the family and exercise.

Kristina Leider (Florham Park)

Kristina is very excited to be joining the club. She’s 24 years old and grew up in Florham Park. She still live at home with her parents. She did her undergraduate at Quinnipiac then a post grad program at Fordham. She will be starting a 5-year Masters/medical school program this August in NY. I completely fell in love with running over this past year largely as a result of Becs Gentry, her favorite Peloton coach. Becs inspired her to lace up every day. A running goal of Kristina is to run in the NYC marathon. She’s interested in joining our racing team, luckily where she will be going to school is only about an hour away.

She says she’s a fairly slow runner (I bet not!), but does her best to get better each day. Her hobbies include reading, snuggling my dog, and spending time with family and friends. Her favorite place is the beach.

She’s very excited to be joining our community. The photo is from her last virtual race on Thanksgiving!

Jordan Kizmann (Morristown)

Jordan is super excited to be part of a group of runners again!

She grew up in Union County and went to Rutgers. She worked for Governor Murphy but left to travel to the Midwest She lived in Madison, Wisconsin for a little under a year as a camp counselor. (the best job ever!) Madison has such an active running culture! She came back to New Jersey the end of 2019 to join a team at Morgan Stanley. She lives in Morristown and has been looking for a running group for a while, so was happy she ran into us on a Saturday! Besides running she likes to bake, paint and hike. Welcome Jordan.

New Members from 2020