Lower Cape Local Runs Falmouth Road Race For Charity

Jake Domos hates running. 

Since picking up the sport about a year ago, he’s run the Boston Marathon, and he plans to run the London Marathon next year. Yet to him still, running is the worst.

“The whole time I'm telling myself, ‘I can stop,’” Domos, 34, said. “‘Hey man, you could stop right now.’ But the feeling after you finish a long run or after you accomplish one of these races or any of the training, there's no better feeling. So what it's done for me, mentally and physically, has been amazing. I can't say enough about running, even though I absolutely hate it.”

There’s another reason why Domos, a Harwich native who now lives in Chatham, runs: He does it for others.

In order to run the Boston Marathon this April, Domos raised nearly $25,000 for Cardinal Cushing Centers, an organization that supports people with intellectual and developmental disabilities — a community his sister Heidi has been a part of for about 20 years.

And last Sunday, Domos ran the seven-mile Falmouth Road Race, in the process raising more than $2,000 for the Matt Brown Foundation. The charity named after Brown, who as a sophomore at Norwood High School in 2010 suffered a spinal cord injury during a hockey game, supports individuals with paralysis.

"That's kind of why I'm doing all this running and such, is I kind of found that I could run for others who maybe can’t," Domos said.

Domos had met Brown at a Boston Bruins Foundation fundraiser earlier this year, he said. The two hit it off, and Brown is also good friends with Domos’ brother-in-law.

“He's amazing,” Domos said. “He has a whole team that's running Falmouth, so he asked me to be a part of it this year, and obviously I was stoked.”

A team of 21, in fact, ran and raised more than $50,000 for the foundation. Domos finished the course in 1:01:58.

He said the race “went awesome.”

Domos is also following the fast footsteps of his father, John, who at a younger age ran local races like Falmouth and competed in triathlons. He’d even win sometimes, according to Domos.

“I just thought it was so cool growing up, but I never really knew how much it took to go into that,” he said. 

Domos may compete more for charity than in pursuit of any victory, but that doesn’t mean the training and racing isn’t tough. He tore his hip flexor prior to the Boston Marathon and ran the race hurt, putting him into recovery for a couple of months. He’d finally been able to run again for about a month and had been training hard, he said.

“Now that I'm a runner and I can see all the work that goes into it, it's pretty full circle to be doing it for myself and others,” he said.