WETHERSFIELD - Brandon Collins is probably too young to remember the Bruce Springsteen song �"Born to Run”, but the title fits him.

       When he and his family were living in the Boston area, his mother, Alisa, would take him down to a local park to play.

       â€�"Instead of playing on the swings, or the slide, he would run around the perimeter of the park,” Alisa recalls.

       Over and over again. He was five.

       â€�"I would start running and get everyone to start playing tag,” Brandon says.

       Catch him if you can.

       Four years later and he’s headed to the Junior Olympics at Norfolk State University in Virginia with the Bloomfield-based Central Connecticut Jaguars track and field club. He runs a 5:49 1,500 meters and his 4x400-meter relay team is first in the region.

       â€�"I knew he had something special,” Alisa says. â€�"Just the endurance that the kid had. He would never get tired. I just wanna give him the tools to take it as far as he possibly can.”

       Distance, is not a problem for him. Disciplined and strategized pacing has made endurance races his best events.

       â€�"If you watch him run, they could be faster in the beginning, [but] he will catch them, because he has a greater reserve left,” Alisa says.

       But the time between him and the long-term goals he envisions for himself feels like an eternity.

       Brandon and Alisa are sitting in the living room of their Wethersfield home, looking ahead to the 2024 Olympics. Not the Junior Olympics--the Olympics. That’s almost 10 years from now.

       For Brandon, that just sank in, and he looks like a kid who’s been just told that the release of the newest PlayStation has been pushed back.

       â€�"That’s so long,” he says.

       Brandon plans to be running in that Olympics, preferably the mile event. He even has a nickname.

       â€�"When he first started running, I said, ‘you’re like a silver bullet,’” Alisa says. â€�"He goes, ‘I’m not silver, I’m beige’.”

       Brandon ‘The Beige Bullet’ Collins. Sounds like an ESPN film already, but the story is still being written.

       â€�"They always have the nicknames,” Alisa says. â€�"Like ‘King James.’”

       But Lebron came home to Cleveland. For Brandon, the journey has a chance to come full circle as well. His home city of Boston is in the running to host the 2024 Olympic Games.

       â€�"He used to say, ‘I’m gonna be the hometown hero,’” Alisa says. â€�"I think that’s the goal.”

       And for now, at least, the path to it runs over hills, a track and a softball field. That’s the training ground for the Jaguars. Three times a week--Monday, Wednesday and Friday--they’re running sprints and a 5K.

       The latter is a trip around the track, a larger field, down some streets, and twice around the softball field. Warm up is a mile-long jog, half-mile on the cool down.

       It’s all in preparation for July 31 when the club goes to Virginia for the Junior Olympics. The road there has taken them through New Haven--the site of the regional qualifiers--and New Britain, where his 4x400 relay team topped clubs everywhere from Connecticut to New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts at the regionals.

       He wasn’t even supposed to race that event that day--another teammate could not make it, so Brandon answered the call.

       â€�"I couldn’t have done it without my 4x400 teammates,” Brandon says.