The starting line of the first AGSS race, May 23, 2018

Last Monday, PPTC’s race committee met virtually to chat about a topic on the mind of many runners: When will we be able to run our first post-COVID-19 race? No one knows when we’ll be able to run or race as we normally do, but that doesn’t mean that the race committee has put its plans on hold. As a runner, you might train for weeks or months before your big event, then take a few weeks off in between. But planning and preparing for races happens year round, even if they don’t exist on the calendar yet.

Registration for the Al Goldstein Summer Speed (AGSS) series is on hold until we have clearance to proceed with race registration and group events. In the meantime, Race Comm is hard at work on making the first AGSS race a virtual one. “We are preparing as best we can to hold these races, so that given the greenlight, we’ll be able to open registration and move quickly,” said Crystal Cun, chair of our Social Committee and Race Committee member. “But obviously a lot of the timing is out of our control.”

The Race Committee is hard at work planning a virtual 5k for the first AGSS race, which will take place on May 20. Permits and race-day arrangements for other races in the series are happening as planned; however, they could potentially take place virtually as well. If you have specific questions or suggestions about the virtual 5k, reach out to Stephanie Mei or Stuart Kaplan, our virtual Race Directors.

Even if we can’t get together on race day for the first AGSS race, you can still throw some speedwork into your training if you feel safe, motivated and healthy enough to do so. As with all of our in-person events, the Club Points Training Group led by Chris Fischer and Noah Devereaux is on hold. Until we can convene again, Noah has been leading PPTC’s Covid 19 Training Group (CVTG) – now in its sixth week – so we can all stay fit and keep our sanity intact. The best part: You don’t need to be targeting a 5k to do them. You can find the workouts on PPTC’s Facebook group. (Editor’s note: If you feel healthy enough to train and practice social distancing, there’s no harm in doing so – especially while planning for races is still underway. Here’s one of many articles that explains how to do it safely).

“This has been a wild and uncertain time for everyone and my own experience is no exception: It’s oddly reassuring that this crisis is so much bigger than myself and I’m basically powerless to do anything besides staying more than six feet from other people,” said Noah. “I was as disappointed as anyone when all the races got cancelled, but this is giving me a new perspective on why I run and what I want to get out of it. Eventually there will be races again, but until then there’s a new freedom to explore different things.”

Not on Facebook and want CVTG details? Reach out to Noah for more info. Until we know more about the rest of AGSS, PPTC President Tom Meany gave us a behind-the-scenes look at what goes into the annual planning process for PPTC’s signature races such as the Cherry Tree, Turkey Trot, and of course, Al Goldstein Summer Speed Series.

Blog Team: How does the race committee work, and what does a race director do?

Tom Meany: We meet once a month, every month. There’s a twelve month schedule for almost every race, so twelve months before the Cherry Tree or Turkey Trot, we have our directors chosen for that race. For AGSS, each of those races has two directors. They share responsibilities. Working up to the race their responsibilities are different, depending on who they are and what they like to do. You can’t just have one person as your key person: If they get sick, or sidelined for some reason, the race has to go on. Part of that is that the other race directors usually act as team captains, or as assistant race directors.

Members who are interested in becoming race directors serve as a junior race director during the summer speed series. By the last two races or three, each one of them gets to be co race director for a race: The regular race directors sit back and let the junior race directors run the show, so they know how to do everything pretty much from start to finish with that size race. The Cherry Tree and the Turkey Trot are much bigger adventures: AGSS has 600 entrants per race, Cherry Tree is 1,200 - 1,500. The Turkey Trot is 2,500.

PPTC Member Tifenn Python and President Tom Meany

Is this year going to be more challenging because you have to find a way to get the race directors and junior race directors prepared?

As soon as the Cherry Tree is over, we shift gears and get right into planning AGSS. The regular race directors sign up so there’s two of them available as instructors for each of the speed series. We also assign junior race directors according to their availability: We want them to attend at least five of the seven races, and to run at least one of the races so they can give participant feedback. So by February or March, we’ve identified who we’re going to have at each race, and were able to get that in before this craziness started. That was our last real meeting.

If the races don’t happen, how does that impact the club financially?

Every race for the season could be canceled, and we would be fine financially. That’s how the leadership looks at it, and I don’t mind sharing how that works. Any good business has to be prepared for that kind of a shutdown of revenue. We’re a very prudent spending group, but we’re also a very generous leadership in terms of our grants program. We do as much as we can to give back and improve the quality of each member’s membership. That’s why we have free pizza at general membership meetings, that’s why we have a reduced ticket price for the awards dinner, and we try to make clothing at cost wherever we can to subsidize different things.

Nicoletta Nerangis, Director and Founder of Run4Fun, and PPTC Vice President Michael Ring

What organizations do we support via grants?

The way that the board functions is that each board member is a committee chairperson, or has a committee that reports to them. Rebekah Tonthat is in charge of PPTC’s grants. She makes sure that the grant team meets and that they take in applications; Holly Chase, PPTC’s secretary, relays info from each team meeting to the board. In 2019, we donated a total of $12,000 to several organizations, such as PS47, BoMF, BSMART (Brooklyn School for Math and Research), Prospect Park Youth Running Club, IS223, Run4Fun, Urban Dove Team Charter School, Girls on the Run NYC, Smiles from Heaven, Fast Feet NYC, NYRR Albany Neighborhood Senior Center, and Striders. All of those organizations are pretty grateful for our support.

Back to Race Comm and planning: What needs to be done well in advance of race day that you’ve already handled?

We’ve already made arrangements with Lakeside: That was taken care of in January. In November, all permit holders in the park who are regular season holders submit their permits by December 1. The dates are approved through NYC Parks Special Events; we get a verbal OK that our race dates are approved as soon as I submit them. We don’t actually get the permits - sometimes we don’t have them until the day of the event! And that doesn’t bother us at all, that’s certainly part of the process. This year, we put in a new permit for the 50 mile race in December. That was the only new one. We haven’t finalized our agreement with our timing company, which is Catskill Timing. But we have a good relationship with [them], so we’re playing it by ear to adjust that contract. We’ll be able to get it for the first race, which is the first Wednesday before Memorial Day.

So it sounds like you’re just going to go ahead and plan, because it’s better to be prepared than not, right?

Oh, absolutely - that’s what we expect to do. We’ll make sure that we have a range for timing, the water, cups, and bibs that we need, insurance, an ambulance, etcetera. We also meet informally with the 78th Precinct police detail in the park. We have a very close relationship with them, so we have all of those things taken care of. It’s a matter of pulling the trigger to get it started.

Fortunately, we have enough trained race directors that we don’t need a new cadre of race directors. The new race directors that come out of AGSS are going to be working the Turkey Trot, they may even be co-director at Harry’s Handicap, and they’ll definitely be assistant director. After they’ve been assistant director at a couple small races, they’re ready for a bigger race, such as Jen and Will are this year for the Turkey Trot. I’ll still be there and Missy will still be there, but we’ll be assistants to them. We can rotate the team with each skill set as needed.

What about after race day? Do you keep notes on what can be improved for next year?

After every race, we have a critique. We go over what went well and what didn’t go well, and what we need to do better. It helps us have fewer decisions to make the day of the race, and to improve the quality and professionalism of the event. And that’s the level we want to be at and want to stay at: One of providing a professional product for all of our club members. Nobody wants to go to a slipshot, poorly planned race.

Volunteer committee leader Eric Levenstein and Race Director Jennie Matz

Just by virtue of the fact that we have a blog team and that you’re calling me to find out about this is a reflection of how organized we are, and how advanced we are at improving our level of communications and transparency for everybody: So that people can get a sense of how the hell the club works! We’re very lucky to have evolved the way we have to have so much creative talent and enthusiasm. People just want to jump in, and our leadership is 100 percent supportive. If you have a creative idea? In the past, it was: Go do it. Now, it’s how many people can we get to support that? We get Eric Levenstein involved, and bam, we have enough volunteers and people to make it happen. Particularly in how we’ve pulled together in this pandemic: I am amazed at how our leadership as a whole has pulled together.

I don’t know if you saw the article in the Daily News: The writer lives near Prospect Park, and in the original draft of the article, it threw all the people who congregate to exercise there into “some club.” There’s only one club in the park: That’s us! We elected Adam Devine to take the lead in responding, and he did. We have a great deal of pride in who we are and how we’re represented, and our club was getting thrown under the bus that these “runners in the park” don’t respect social space. We are doing as much as we can to fight that.