Damani Mitchell was interviewed for Wake Forest Magazine by Kelly Greene, a TCTC member. This Q&A was adapted from a piece on ways that Wake Forest University gets outside.
Damani Mitchell, who earned an MBA from Wake Forest University School of Business in 2024, has spent more time crisscrossing the Reynolda campus as a runner than he did as a student. While working on his MBA and also holding down a full-time job, he rarely ventured far from Farrell Hall.
On Saturday mornings these days, it’s a different story. After spending the work week as a manufacturing engineering supervisor for Collins Aerospace, Mitchell laces up and joins a faithful group for a “no-drop” run, meaning no one gets left behind. He and his running buddies start in Reynolda Village, head down the trail to Reynolda campus and take in its beauty in every season. (More on that below.)
The meet-up, organized through Twin City Track Club, means so much to Mitchell that he recently ran for and was elected as the club’s vice president.
How did you get into running?
I’m not, let’s say, super competitive in sports. So running was a good activity I could do growing up that kept you active without having to find a team and constantly trying to get better. And it also just really puts you at peace. So, me and my family, we lived near the sea (in Kingston, Jamaica), and we would go for runs along the beach.
And then I would kind of run in between classes in college (at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Daytona Beach, Florida). And then I kicked it up after I graduated. I was living in West Virginia, and it was gorgeous along the Greenbrier River Trail. I would go there a couple times a week, and the more you run, it becomes easier, and you hit new milestones.
One day, I set a goal of being able to run a 10-mile stretch. I’d never run that much before. I’d run a whole bunch of fours and sixes and one day I got to about six miles, and I’m like, “Let’s just keep going.” I got to eight that day, and I was like, “Man, maybe I could have done the 10.”
My first race was a 10K called the Chocolate Chase, and it was at the Lewisburg (West Virginia) Chocolate Festival. At the end of the race, they have chocolate bacon and Nutella on burgers. So, my first race was very, very memorable.
And then you found a running group in Winston-Salem?
When I moved six years ago, I saw there was a running club, and I thought that would be something interesting to be involved with. We go through Reynolda Gardens. We start off the Saturday run uphill into campus, and we run right past Farrell Hall. It’s like a homecoming every Saturday.
And you will see a theme here: I love donuts, so in 2020, I signed up for the Krispy Kreme Challenge at NC State University. (Runners go 2.5 miles, eat a dozen donuts, and run 2.5 miles back.) It was just thousands of boxes of donuts.
We runners can fake ourselves into a half marathon – his first half marathon was Winston-Salem’s Mistletoe Run in 2022, and he ran it again in 2024. If you can get past a couple miles, you can get up to that 13. But I can tell you, I was pretty much done at 11.
I’m going to give credit to the track club. Because of that Saturday morning run, I have run my longest runs, hottest runs, coldest runs, earliest runs. I broke so many personal records because we’d go in, it’s a five-mile run normally, and somebody says, “Hey, let’s just go run three more.” I’m like, “OK.” And then last year when the wind chill made it feel like it was 17 or 18 degrees, they still had 12 people show up.
My hands don’t generate warmth. I found these rechargeable electric handwarmers. I turn those on, and I set them in my gloves. That way, we’re going to have a much better experience.
What’s your advice for people who want to get into running?
The group dynamic really helps. A lot of people show up consistently because they know everybody else is going to be there, and we end with donuts. There are always treats at the end. Motivation is very, very important. So, I try to help people not look at it as one long, big, fast run that you can’t do. It’s more of a couch-to-5K approach. You break this big thing down into what’s actually not that many small things. That really, really helps.
