New Members | rosecityrunners

New Members Welcome

Barb Rushman - New Member Chair

Jennifer O'Neil (Chatham)

Jenn just got married in June of 2021 and she and her husband bought a house and moved to Chatham shortly thereafter! She started running after college and quickly fell in love with it, becoming active in the NYC running scene with NYRR races. She looks forward to the Saturday morning group runs to meet new people who are also passionate runners. She has run several half marathons and marathons, and is currently training for the NYC marathon this Fall of 2021. She also hopes to run some New Jersey races as a part of the Rose City team! Aside from running, Jenn loves baking, skiing, and taking walks in her new neighborhood with her new husband!

Jorge Largacha and Maria Isabel Reyes (Madison)

Jorge and Maria moved to Madison in Aug 2021 and while exploring the surroundings found a leaflet of our group that immediately got their attention. They don't have any experience as runners but since the pandemic hit they’ve been doing long walks and Jorge has started running around but as of yet doesn't go further than 6mi. (Hah! Jorge’s first Saturday run, he did the 8-mile course!)

They are both industrial engineers from Colombia and lived in Brazil for 10 years before coming to the US March last year. They love to travel and learn new places, cultures and people. They’re super excited to joining our group, learning from the pros, having a community experience after the long period of isolation they all went thru and who knows preparing for a race later on :)

Kavish Shukla (Chatham)

Kavich lives in Chatham with my wife, daughter and son. He love the outdoors, enjoys walking, biking, running and rock climbing. He has run a few half marathons, NYC, Montreal, San Francisco, Staten Island and Brooklyn. He developed an injury preparing for NYC marathon and since taking a break. With Rose City Runners he is excited to gradually get back in to running (fingers crossed!).

Ranjini Sridhar (Chatham)

Ranjini is new to running and wants to give it a try. She usually walks in Loantaka Park. She was curious about running clubs in the area and google found us! She also happened to see our group one morning in Loantaka.

She’s a community pharmacist. She love practicing yoga. She has 2 girls. The youngest is leaving to college this fall. She enjoys traveling, good food and good wine! She’s a little nervous about runnin but will give it her best effort!

She often goes by a shortened version of her name so you an call her Jini!

Kate Solinsky Berenter (Chatham)

Kate lives with her husband Matt and 7 month-old son Harry in Chatham Borough. They recently moved to Chatham after living in NYC and West New York. She's an Enterprise Sales Director at the Martech company, Demandbase. Kate loves to try new things (typical Gemini) but some of her favorite interests include podcasts, theatre and cooking. Kate is a breast-cancer survivor so regular exercise is very important to her. She dedicates her time to helping others that are going through a cancer journey. The furthest distance she has run is 5.5 miles. She hopes to run a half-marathon one day!

Erica Deacan (Madison)

Erica lives in Madison and is always looking for running partners for early morning before work especially as she trains for some half-marathons in September. She attended a Saturday run and hope she will be a regular.

Mary Biddee (Florham Park)

Mary learned of the club one Saturday morning when Barb R stopped her on Kitchell Rd. She has been joining us when she can. She’s been taking a class Saturday that just ended so she will be more regular. Originally from Florida, she moved to Florham Park about a year ago. She has 3 children (ages 13, 12 and 7) who are involved in sports so Mary is their chauffeur. She is currently a student, training to be a rehabilitation counselor. She loves running and is happy she found our group.

Samantha Vitoni (Madison)

Samantha moved to Madison of October 2020 and couldn't be happier with her move to the town. She is original from Pine Brook, New Jersey where her family still lives. She started her running journey in the year 2018 all because of a New Year's Resolution. She wanted to be healthy mentally and physically. Since then, she has run multiple running events and this year, she will be running her fourth half marathon on Halloween! She has never belonged to a running club before but is very excited to join Rose City Runners Club where she can meet other passionate runners and walkers alike.

On her free time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, community service and working out. She is huge on walking, especially during her lunch breaks and after work.

Celeste Post (Morris Township)

Celeste says “It's nice to hear from you! I always heard of RCR because I grew up in Madison, and then I saw someone posted in the Madison Area FB page looking for running groups, and I figured it would be a nice way to be a little more social now that I've moved back to this area as an adult. I was always active and even ran for a D3 school my freshman year of college! I enjoy running socially and during my time working at Liftime in college, I was part of the Run Club and I missed being part of a group. I currently work in web development and marketing, and am going back to school to go into education. I moved back to the area in June of last year with my partner, who is a nurse at Morristown Memorial.”

As for her running level, she used to do 2-3 mile jogs, but tore her meniscus in February skiing. Since then she’s been rehabbing that injury and just recently got the OK to run to do intervals (usually 3min:2min running / walking or 5min:3min running/walking at a moderate pace for 15 - 30 minutes).

Raymond Nieves (Chatham)

Ray is married with two children – one daughter and one son. He looks forward to the fitness. conditioning and motivation afforded by being a part of Rose City Runners. He counts on Saturday mornings also for the fun and social benefits of running as a group. He hopes to work up to do more races up to a half-marathon and marathon. Ray also enjoys taiko drumming, hiking, travel and adventures to places he’s never been before.

Mitchel Horn (Madison)

Mitch works for the NJ Air National Guard. His running goal is to get faster and to not get injured. (He added a ‘ haha’) His overall fitness goal is to maintain a perfect score on the Air Force Physical Training standards. In terms of hobbies, he says with 3 kids he’s pretty busy.

Patrick Sweeney (New Providence)

Pat is married with two daughters and 3 grandchildren. After more than 35 years with Ma Bell he decided for a change and in 2019 joined a close friend’s electrical contracting company. While running at Loantaka Park with a friend Fang in early April 2021 they ran into the club in the parking lot and were encouraged to join. So, they did and love it! Pat says he’s still very much a novice but looks forward to the commitment of running more often, a goal of running 3 days a week, and getting to know other club members. He also enjoys the gym, golf, fishing, travel, family and friends.

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.

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.

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!

New Members from 2020

Jorge Largacha & Maria Isabel Reyes

Kavich Shukla