Today we’d like to introduce you to Caroline Guterres.
Hi Caroline, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today?
Canton Run Club started with a pretty simple idea: my friend and co-founder, Alyssa, and I wanted to create a space where people could get active together, meet new like-minded individuals, and feel like they were part of something. We both loved running, but from the beginning, we knew we wanted the club to be about so much more than just running.
When we started CRC in 2024, we really had no idea what it would become. We were just two friends trying to create something fun and welcoming in our neighborhood. What started with a small group of people showing up to run together has grown into hundreds of people coming out on Monday nights throughout our season. Seeing 200 – 300 people gather together in Baltimore because of something that started as an idea between the two of us still feels surreal.
One of the things I’m most proud of is that you don’t have to consider yourself a “runner” to belong at Canton Run Club. We have people at every pace and every level of experience. Some people come because they’re training for a race, some are trying running for the first time, and some honestly come because they want to meet people and stay for a drink afterward. We wanted CRC to feel approachable, social, and inclusive rather than intimidating or competitive.
Over the past three seasons, the community has taken on a life of its own! We’ve watched complete strangers meet at our runs and become close friends. People have found roommates, training partners, relationships, professional connections, and entire friend groups through Canton Run Club. We’ve also had the opportunity to work with incredible Baltimore organizations, businesses, nonprofits, races, and brands, which has allowed us to connect our runners with even more of the city.
Baltimore can sometimes get talked about for all the wrong reasons, and one of my favorite parts of CRC is getting to showcase a completely different side of this city. On a Monday evening, seeing hundreds of people running through Canton and Patterson Park, encouraging one another, meeting someone new, supporting a local business afterward, and simply enjoying Baltimore together is something I genuinely cherish.
Alyssa and I may have started Canton Run Club, but the people who continued showing up are the ones who made it what it is. At this point, it feels much less like something we created and much more like something that belongs to the community.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
One of our biggest challenges has actually come from one of our greatest successes: the club grew much faster and much larger than we ever anticipated.
When you start something casually with a friend, you don’t necessarily think about what happens if hundreds of people start showing up every week. As CRC grew, there became a lot more happening behind the scenes than people probably realize. We had to think about routes, safety, communication, social media, partnerships, events, logistics, local businesses, and how to maintain the sense of community that made people love the club in the first place.
There has also been a learning curve in figuring out how to grow something without losing what made it special when it was small. Numbers are exciting, but we’ve never wanted success to simply mean having the biggest turnout. To me, success is someone showing up alone and leaving having met three new people. It’s someone who never thought they could run completing their first race. It’s seeing the same faces return week after week and watching friendships form in real time.
Balancing CRC with the rest of our lives has probably been another challenge that isn’t always visible. I work as a NICU nurse and am also in graduate school to become a Family Nurse Practitioner, so there have definitely been times when I’ve gone from working a 12-hour shift, being fully immersed in a clinical day, or studying for an exam straight into a meeting, run, or event for CRC. Building something like this requires a lot of time. energy, and organization behind the scenes, even when it looks effortless from the outside.
But I also think those challenges have taught us so much. Neither of us started this because we were experts in building organizations or managing a community of this size. We learned as we went, listened to the people around us, made mistakes, adjusted, and kept moving forward. I think there’s something really valuable in starting before you have everything figured out. Sometimes you have to trust an idea, put it into the world, and allow the people around you to help shape what it becomes.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
The “work” of Canton Run Club is community building.
On the surface, we’re a run club. We meet, run a few miles together, and gather somewhere local afterward for a post run social and happy hour. But running is really just the vehicle that brings everyone into the same place. What we’re actually trying to create is connection.
A huge part of what Alyssa and I do is create opportunities for people to experience Baltimore and one another in ways they might not otherwise. We organize our weekly runs, manage our social media and communication, coordinate partnerships and special events, work with local businesses, collaborate with brands and other organizations, and find ways for CRC to give back to the larger Baltimore community.
We’ve been fortunate to collaborate with organizations ranging from local running stores and businesses to major brands and Baltimore institutions. We’ve also been able to use the community we’ve built to support causes that are important to us, including our work with the Ulman Foundation and other cancer-related initiatives. Those opportunities have shown me how powerful a community can become when people are willing to show up for one another.
I think one reason CRC has resonated with people is because it fills a need that extends far beyond fitness. Making friends as an adult can be hard. Moving to a new city can be lonely. Even if you’ve lived somewhere for years, it can be difficult to find a place where you genuinely feel like you belong. A run club gives people a reason to walk into a space alone where they know they won’t be the only person looking for connection.
That’s what I want our work to continue to represent. You can come for the run, but hopefully you leave with something more — a new friend, a stronger connection to the city of Baltimore, a sense of accomplishment, or simply the feeling that there truly is a wonderful community here that you’re always welcome to be part of.
How do you think about happiness?
For me, happiness has always been about the people I get to share my life with and the moments that make me feel connected to them. It’s being surrounded by people I love, laughing with friends, being outside, staying active, and sometimes just slowing down enough to realize how lucky I am to be in the moment I’m in.
Canton Run Club has given me so many of those moments. There’s a point before some of our Monday runs when I’ll look around and realize there are hundreds of people standing there talking, laughing, stretching, introducing themselves, and catching up with people they met through CRC. It’s a reminder to me that sometimes the simplest idea can create the most unexpected and lasting connections. I love knowing that long after the miles are finished, the friendships and memories made here will last for a lifetime.
Those moments have changed my definition of accomplishment. Of course I’m proud of how much CRC has grown, but the number of people standing at a run isn’t what makes me happiest. It’s hearing someone say they met their best friends through CRC. It’s watching someone who showed up alone a few weeks earlier now welcoming someone else who came alone. It’s seeing people cheer for the last runner just as loudly as the first. It’s watching a community continue to build upon itself.
I think happiness is also realizing that some of the most meaningful things in your life can start very small. You don’t always know the impact something will have when you begin. Sometimes it’s just two friends with an idea, deciding to try.
So here we are, three seasons later, getting to look around at what that idea became — and knowing that Baltimore embraced it more than we could have ever imagined and truly made it its own — and this is something I’ll always be incredibly grateful for.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @cantonrunclub
Image Credits
Tina McNelis (McNelis Photography)
