It’s not always easy to find motivation to exercise, especially through the winter months, but let these native Northforkers inspire you to lace up and hit the pavement.
Xavier and Jacob Kahn, twins who graduated as valedictorian and salutatorian from Greenport High School in 2019, launched Runnon, “the racing app for runners,” in August.
The Kahn brothers, former high school soccer players, came up with the idea for an app that allows friends to virtually challenge each other. Races of varied distances and completing team feats allow users to earn in-app points.
Despite attending two different colleges, Xavier and Jacob, in true brotherly fashion, used Strava — a run tracking social media app — to log runs and try to beat each other’s time.
The stars aligned on their dreams of going into business together when they thought to make a more efficient way of playing this virtual “game” with the help of their third co-founder Myles Nowak.
“We figured there was no tool on the market that allows friends and family to directly race each other or challenge each other like that,” says Jacob. “Strava is more like the locker room for running, where you just post on a social media feed or just talk about how your run was.”
Jacob works part-time on the app as he is a first lieutenant in the United States Air Force, based in Austin, Texas. Xavier, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Costa Rica post college graduation, is currently living in New York City working full-time on the app.
The self-taught developers plan on expanding the app’s availability and in-app features.
They have grown the business through social media promotion and in-person outreach at run clubs, including a recently-launched one right in their hometown — the North Fork Run Club.
Ava Cosby, a 2020 Riverhead High School alum and Greenport native, spent some of her education in Greenport with the Kahn twins.
Cosby picked up running recently to improve her mental and physical health post-partum. After jokes with friends about starting a run club, Cosby decided to go for it on June 29, sharing the Mitchell Park meetup information on Instagram.
“I was like, ‘I’m just going to do it and see who comes,’ and if no one comes, I will still be running at the end of the day,” says Cosby. Over a dozen runners came out.
Thanks to Cosby’s organization, the group continued to meet through the summer most Sundays at 7 a.m. and 9 a.m. for casual runs or walks while connecting.
“I knew the locals that have been here for generations but these people are locals — they’ve just been here for five years,” says Cosby. “I got a whole new perspective on these really great people.”
Cosby partnered with local companies like Aldo’s, ending running routes downtown where businesses provide discounts for the athletes.
She is currently in search of someone to lead the club and continue it through the winter; Cosby plans to resume run meet-ups next summer when she returns from her other home in Manassas, Va.
To learn more about North Fork Run Club follow @northforkrunclub on Instagram; to download Runnon, visit Runnon.io.
