Feet pounding on pavement, wind rushing across faces and music fueling the movement — having existed for millions of years, running is one of the oldest forms of movement.

In Bryan-College Station, a modern-day community for the sport has emerged; a group of people running to improve, support and help each other. That is the mission of the run club Cloud 9, better known as C9 to its members. 

Chatting over a giant BJ’s Restaurant and Brewhouse Pizookie, five Texas A&M students decided Bryan-College Station was missing a movement: a running movement. This group of friends launched their first run club event in September 2025 and have been going strong ever since. 

Biomedical sciences senior Janak Abraham said that this community of like-minded students was lacking in Bryan-College Station.

“We see it in Austin, we see it in Houston with all these run clubs coming about, bringing a community together,” Abraham said. “ … I feel like bringing that here was our main goal and that was our main mission, and with that brought community, with that brought people who are like-minded.”

The club aims to bring a fresh perspective to the running movement in Bryan-College Station, hosting free events rooted in community.

“At A&M there’s so much tradition,” biomedical sciences junior Esha Chowdhury said. “To have something new and fresh, I feel like is really good for the community.”

According to current members, the Aggie community has shown up for the run club through support from entrepreneurial undergrads, small businesses and community members.

“Especially in College Station, like, people are really willing to help you, and it’s just a matter of reaching out and being like ‘Hey, could you do this for us?’” C9 Co-founder and neuroscience senior Aditi Mohankumar said. “ … And that’s something that’s very different from bigger cities.”

Soon after C9’s first event, Red Bull reached out to support the startup, collaborating with them to establish a heartbeat in A&M’s campus life with one of Red Bull’s biggest worldwide events: Wings for Life. Runners worldwide start the race at the exact same time, on the exact same day, to raise money and awareness for spinal cord research. This year, on May 10, hundreds of runners will be at the start line in College Station thanks to C9. 

“So she [a Red Bull representative] pitched it to us, she was like, ‘We don’t really have a heartbeat in A&M. Y’all are really close to the student population … so we need y’all to do what we can’t,’” Abraham said. “So they came to us with the whole proposition, and that’s when we started kind of C9 came to be and came to form around Wings for Life.”

However, C9 has not stopped with its run club. Its founders are currently working on a new approach to gain even more traction with its participants by introducing the Cloud 9 Collective. Consisting of “Sweat and Chill” events to promote community and “Run and Sip” events to foster greater engagement with small business and student organizations in the Bryan-College Station area, C9 is reaching for the stars. 

Its first “Sweat and Chill” event, a yoga and Lululemon pop-up, was hosted at PopStroke on March 28.

“We are really trying to push the ‘work hard, play hard’ mentality,” Mohankumar said. “But like with the orgs and stuff, we want to partner with them to host mixers and have people connect on more of a health and wellness aspect.”

In lieu of the strenuous time commitments, C9 aims to primarily serve as a social club, with an emphasis on the come-and-go-as-you-please mindset. The mission is to focus on positive social connection and fun events. 

“Even if they just come to one event, as long as they walk out of the event, happy and at least feeling good, that they accomplished something, that’s all we really intend with their time,” Abraham said. “Have fun with it.”

Biomedical sciences freshman John Nguyen said that C9 has helped him find community during his time at A&M. As a student that was looking for community, Nguyen said that the run club has not only helped with consistency, but also helped him to find friendly faces at such a large school. 

“I just think it’s a good way to meet people,” Nguyen said. “It’s like, I see the same faces once a month. … It also holds me accountable because I’ve always wanted to be consistent with running.”

Neuroscience junior Shivaali Vibarajan has encouraged utilizing C9 as an introduction to what a personalized wellness lifestyle can look like. 

“I think, especially for Cloud 9, it’s like a type of introduction to your workout lifestyle,” Vibarajan said. “Like you can just figure out what kind of mile pace you want to go, if you even like running. … I feel like it’s a type of thing that you can find social connection, get back into a lifestyle that actually helps you, and it’s actually good for your mind, body [and] soul.”

C9 members explained that the club stands for fostering positivity, community and providing a jumpstart to health and wellness living, even for the biggest running skeptics. 

“Cloud 9 really has changed my outlook on just approaching people,” Abraham said. “ … All you can do is be a positive light for them in case they want to come back and actually change their outlook on their whole day.”