Running for the Soul of Community

Ever since opening the Flathead Valley’s only run specialty store, owner Casey Jermyn and his staff have noticed a familiar refrain among their new customers at the downtown Kalispell business.

“Everyone keeps saying, ‘Finally! What’s taken so long?’” Jermyn said in early June, about two months after Flathead Running Company opened its doors on Kalispell’s Main Street corridor to a fever-pitch of fanfare. “There’s definitely a lot of enthusiasm and excitement, both for a run specialty store as well as for the community you can build around it.”

For Jermyn, who grew up in nearby Plains before attending college at Montana State University in Bozeman — where he set a stack of enduring records in track and field and cross country, was inducted into the Bobcat Athletics Hall of Fame and established Bozeman Running Company 15 years ago — coalescing the community around running isn’t a business strategy, it’s an extension of his homegrown roots.

Having been raised in a small town, Jermyn’s origin story as a runner is as scrappy as you might imagine. But he didn’t pull himself up by his own shoe laces; indeed, he had plenty of help from friends and family along the way. Although Plains had a cross country team at some point in its high school athletics history, the club had fallen dormant through the years until Tim Brooker resurrected it in the 1990s. Jermyn was friends with Brooker’s son, Anders, and together they recruited him onto the newly minted team.

“I complained a lot at first,” Jermyn said. “I don’t know that I necessarily loved running, but by my sophomore year of high school I started enjoying it more, devoting more time and energy to it. And I improved as a runner. It really began to shape my identity.”

Running also shaped his friend Anders’ identity, so much so that he opened The Runner’s Edge in Missoula in 2001, setting a new standard for how a run specialty store can function, and succeed, as a community hub. By 2010, Jermyn had developed his own small business chops while working briefly at The Runner’s Edge, while also gaining firsthand experience with the running industry writ large as a regional sales associate for Brooks Running, the sports equipment behemoth headquartered in Seattle.

The business savvy he picked up at Brooks enriched Jermyn’s brick-and-mortar pedigree, so much so that when an opportunity opened up to purchase a Fleet Feet location in Bozeman, he seized the chance, and then transformed the store into Bozeman Running Company.

With Flathead Running Company designed as a sister store, Jermyn doesn’t have any doubt about its potential.

“I gained a lot of confidence from being on both sides of the industry, and I realized that I could build my own store with its own identity,” Jermyn said. “I looked at the Flathead Valley community, which hasn’t had a run specialty store, and I knew something was missing. Every time a customer tells me, ‘we’ve needed this for so long,’ I feel that my instincts were right. Because we’re not just seeing a demand for the store, we’re also seeing a huge desire for community connection, events and races. It’s not just about the running store; it’s the community you build around it.”

That pent-up enthusiasm was on full display in early June when the running shop organized its inaugural Brew Run Series at Bias Brewing, attracting more than 100 runners of all abilities to a community group run followed by craft beers and a raffle. From stroller pushers to course-record setters, a dynamic cross-section of the Flathead Valley’s running community turned out.

“There were so many people representing so many different types of runners,” store manager April DiMeo said. “In this valley, we have everything from elite athletes to beginning runners and walkers, and people who love to race to those who prefer to run alone.”

For DiMeo, who characterizes herself as falling in the latter category of runners, her penchant for solo runs has led to a running streak of more than 2,000 consecutive days. She’s excited to help other members of the community find consistency and joy in running.

“I think people sense that we’re super excited to ingrain ourselves in the community and build a close-knit space around running,” DiMeo said. “We want to be a hub of the running community in the Flathead Valley.”