Crystal Cun (she/her) was one of the first people I met in Prospect Park Track Club when I joined the summer of 2017. She was friendly and welcoming and up for anything - including running stairs to cap off a 12 mile run in the heat. Soon after joining, she became part of the Social Committee. When she started leading it as committee chair, we all benefited from more of the social events that build our club into a community. Last year, Crystal became club president, the first Asian American to hold the position, and the fourth woman to serve as PPTC president. ¹ Since her inauguration, Crystal has led the club with kindness, thoughtfulness, and strength.

Last summer, Crystal and I found refuge in a Prospect Heights cafe during a thunderstorm. Between sips of coffee and amongst a comforting chorus of chatter and clinking dishes we discussed her relationship with the club, the sacredness of community, her role as president, and Crystal- beyond the club.

Please note this interview was edited for length and clarity.

Rachael (she/her): What motivates/inspires you to run?

Crystal: Originally, I started running because I love to eat. I looked up which sports burn the most calories per hour, and I couldn’t go cross-country skiing that often, so running was the #2 option. Now, I run because I’ve discovered that runners are kindred spirits afflicted with my flavor of crazy. People who believe in the power of small habits leading to BIG transformations, who dream audaciously, and aren’t afraid of hard work. Neither of these answers really involves fitness per se, and even today, it feels weird when people refer to me as an athlete.

R: When you took over social committee there was a big uptick in events and it seemed like PPTC became more of a community than a running club. I was really impressed by that. I was wondering how you were able to make that possible.

C: The community aspect of Prospect Park Track Club is really, really important. Tom Meany has said this before and I’m going to quote him again that “running makes us a team, but our social events are what makes us a family”. The uptick in social events after I became social chair was really due to the number of other organizers who jumped in.

I don’t think it’s any secret that we depend on volunteers to execute everything that we do and we were able to leverage so many different people. The variety of ideas people come up with and the enthusiasm everyone has for jumping in to:

Fine tune the logistical details
Make reservations ahead of time
Come up with a route and testing
Be an open and welcoming presence the day of the event
Make sure that we accommodate for a range of paces and that there’s a chance to meet new people.

There’s a lot that goes into the execution of a social event and when we do it right, it’s not noticeable. It looks like it happened and came together very easily.

I am proud of our social committee. I’m also really excited that Evy [Barnett] has stepped up to be our new social comm chair. I’m super grateful that she’s been able to take over what I’ve considered to be my baby for five years, and take it to new places.

R: You’ve done an awesome job and Evy’s continuing on to do great work. Social committee really does seem to be the backbone of our club. It’s a big job to take on and you both have and are doing it beautifully.

C: I think it’s interesting when you look at the clubs on NYRR’s website. Clubs can self-select to be in one of two categories: competitive or social. We are listed as a social club. When I saw that initially, I thought, “What?! But we’re also competitive.” When I considered it some more, I realized, “While being competitive and racing is very important to us, it is not the PPTC culture to emphasize people’s training and speed over the social aspect of it. Rather, we support both competitive AND social runners.” Everyone here knows and respects people who have great race times and put in great training. We are all very proud of you and will give you all the kudos, but that doesn’t mean you have to be that kind of runner to be welcomed and respected in PPTC. I think that inclusivity distinguishes us from a lot of running clubs.

Crystal at the NYC Marathon. Photo by Marek Stepniowski (he/him)

R: Did your position as social committee chair help ease the transition to PPTC president?

C: Absolutely. For any future board members out there, being part of a committee is a great training route for learning the ins and outs of club administration. Being social comm[ittee] chair is a very public and visible position and I am lucky that I was able to meet a lot of people through it. Going from social comm chair to president of the club felt like a very natural transition. There were a lot of functions that I was already familiar with: being a face of the club, welcoming people, finding ways for volunteers to get along, and making sure that the different interests and personalities of the club all get along. It’s easier said than done, but I think that being social committee chair helps you build interpersonal skills that you need to be an effective leader.

R: What changes can we expect in the club now that you’re President?

C: Fresh sourdough bread for everyone! In all seriousness, I’m grateful that the club is already in an excellent place. I see a few areas of focus for me, namely that we must continue attracting and rewarding internal talent through our volunteer program; we should build scalable systems as the club grows; and we must maintain our financial stability for our members, grants program, and partners. Did you know your running club has given away over $100,000 in grants and donations in the last 5 years? Think about it, that’s a mind blowing impact for a local running club! And I know we can do even more in the future.

One thing that will not change is our club’s focus on creating the best possible experience for members. My predecessor, Tom Meany, has always said that our priority is not the quantity of our members, but the quality of our member experience, which has been a wonderful guiding light for us.

Tom Meany(he/him) and Crystal at an Al Goldstein Summer Series race. Photo by Larry Sillen.

R: I’m still thinking about how the club is classified. It is so remarkable though that even though we are so social and we identify as a social club for NYRR, that we are still very competitive.

C: Yeah, I am thrilled that we perform very well in the clubs’ rankings. A few years ago our men’s division finally made it into the Club Points Open A category. That’s a big deal. That’s a testament to our success as a club. PPTC is able to help members train and provide them with the right environment and support to accomplish these things.

R: I’ve been a part of various teams and sports clubs over the years and have found that a happy person or a happy community does a lot more than rigorously train.

C: Yeah, I definitely agree with that. I know that we all have lives outside of PPTC and you have to prioritize your work, family, and relationships above anything going on in the club. While training and hitting a goal time for a race can be really important, at the end of the day, we each have other things we need to take care of. If you have other problems that you’re trying to solve that are not training related, but life related, the club is an amazing environment to support you for life as well. You can see it on the kinds of questions we get on Discord with people offering to help other members move apartments, find jobs, and with wedding photographer recommendations.

When I think about my relationship with the club, I realized that PPTC helped me build roots in Brooklyn. It has kept me not only in New York City, but in this neighborhood specifically. I have a support group of people from PPTC who are there and have my back, not just as teammates, but as my chosen family. That’s such a nice feeling. I didn’t realize that I would be getting that when I joined the club and it is worth way more than $25 per year

R: What’s your favorite part of being a member of PPTC?

C: PPTC is built on volunteers. We do incredible things and it is a labor of love. It is all voluntary and is a testament to the dedication and enthusiasm of our volunteer pool that we as a club are able to accomplish all the things that we do. We put on 11 races per year, we have donated $100,000+ in the last five years. We support our community and we do all this through volunteers. It’s really important that we continue to bring new volunteers into the fold, to let them see how meaningful that experience can be and that we also mentor those volunteers to become future leaders in the club.

To get back to your original question: I think the best part of being in club leadership is that I can empower our volunteers to identify problems and solve them to make our running community better in their own way. I can help provide the mentorship to help them develop their leadership skills. PPTC can provide resources, advice, and money where needed. It is super exciting to watch people become strong, talented leaders in PPTC. Sometimes you see that they have applied their skills in their work lives or outside of the club. I think that’s really cool too.

Crystal starting off the fun at the 2022 Turkey Trot: Race for Reconciliation. Photo by Marek Stepniowski.

R: Do you have any upcoming running goals or running adjacent goals?

C: To be honest, I don’t really have a goal at the moment and I think that’s okay. Racing is always a game of trying to be a slightly better version of yourself than before. At the end of the day, your times are arbitrary numbers that no one but yourself cares about, honestly.

For me, it’s been a tough couple of pandemic years. It’s a little bit frustrating to not continually set PRs, but that is the reality of what it is. That progress is not a steady stream forwards, you take steps back, you take steps sideways. The last couple of years have really forced me to evaluate why I run. I recognize that I was very lucky to have a few years as a new runner where every single race I set a PR. That wasn’t going to last and I’ve reached that point and that’s okay.

I also am thankful that there are a lot of older runners around me who remind me that:

A) You can be setting PRs for a very long time. You can see that in a lot of our master’s runners’ performances.

B) The ultimate end goal is to be running for life. You can see that with Doug Olney’s running. He has been running so consistently for so many years and that is my true goal, is to be running like Doug or Murray Rosenblith decades from now.

R: Do you have a favorite PPTC event?

C: Harry’s Handicap is the best event that we put on all year. I highly recommend anyone who is new and hasn’t been to one, please go. It happens January 1st. It is a handicapped 3.3mi race, 1 loop of the park, where anyone can win. I think that’s such a beautiful thing that we start off the year with something very healthy and wholesome and with our running family. We run around the park, and then we have a potluck and it’s such a nice way to kick off the new year. Harry’s Handicap is the brainchild of our club founder, Harry Murphy, and it reminds me that PPTC is a long throughline of interconnected runners and a history that has lasted over five decades. I’m part of that and I’m helping to shape the future of the club, to make more memories, and to welcome more people into the fold every year. It’s magical.

R: What’s your favorite fuel or recovery meal or drink? How do you like to recover from a long run?

C: I’m actually quite bad at fueling during runs. My top choices after a run would be a scoop of ice cream or classic Florentine Eggs Benedict. I usually get brunch after a long run. I don’t eat out a ton, but Saturday brunch is probably the meal I go out most frequently for.

Crystal biking in Napa Valley. Photo by Marek Stepniowski

R: What type of cross-training do you enjoy the most?

C: Hmm, what do I enjoy the most? Okay, that’s different from what I do most often.

R: Does that change your answer?

C: Yeah, I mean no one likes doing planks. The things you should be doing are strength training and core, which I do once a week, but that’s not fun. Let’s be serious. We did the plank off during the pandemic and when I dropped out, Lisa Smith won. I was plenty happy to let her win that. If I recall correctly, she held a plank for eleven minutes.

In terms of things that are actually fun, I would say biking. It’s much nicer to bike a long distance in ninety degree summer heat than it is to run it. Marek [my partner] has gotten me into longer distance bike riding. That’s definitely his influence and experience with longer distance biking. I’ve done some longer rides and that definitely opened my eyes to how hard biking can be. As someone who casually commuted via bike for over a decade I never really thought of it as being difficult. Then I went on some long bike rides in the mountains Upstate where I wanted to cry, so I did! I have a lot of respect for cyclists and anyone who has done triathlon training.

R: I know you’ve always been a big bread maker and there was the bread making craze during 2020. Did you wind up giving some secrets away about how to make bread?

C: Yeah, sometime in March 2020, I sat down and put together a deck on how to make sourdough bread. I did a virtual presentation for a few friends and then I sent the slides to at least a couple other dozen people. So, if anyone ever wants bread starter or to see the deck, I’m happy to share either. I’m sure that the vast majority of people I gave starter to baked once and then quietly let their starter die and that’s okay. I definitely still bake at least once a week. I actually just baked a loaf this morning.

I love fresh bread. I love the ritual of putting it together and seeing how these elemental ingredients—flour, water, salt—all come together and turn into something totally different. And it’s delicious. It’s one of the easiest things that I can make to share with people. It feels like I’ve unlocked some secret of the universe.

Crystal’s famous sourdough. Photo by Crystal Cun.

R: We know a lot of what you do for the club, but what do you do for work?

C: Regarding work, I sell seafood for Fulton Fish Market which is a pretty iconic New York institution and I know that there are people who’ve had fond childhood memories of Fulton Fish Market. The only part of that that I think is sort of relevant to the club is that I’m a product manager which basically means that I make sure things are done on time. That is definitely a skill that has helped me a lot as a leader in the club. It’s following up and making sure that the right person is delegated to the task and that they know when it needs to be completed. It’s really not rocket science, but it does require organization. I think that’s a big part of how I wound up in club leadership.

R: Is there anything else you’d like the club to know about you?

C: One last push to get involved with the club and volunteer because it will transform your relationship with PPTC and all your fellow teammates. Also, it’s super fun. There are few places in life where you can identify a problem you want to fix and have people to support you with advice and money to fix it. PPTC is one of those rare places and that’s really special. As you look at your frustrations with politics, climate, or whatever else, you can feel defeated. PPTC is one area of my life where I can feel empowered.

[1]

The other three women who served as PPTC president are: Regina Cahill (the first woman president of a mixed gender team in NYC; serving 1980- 1984), Lori Lopez, and Ann Perzeszty. It is believed that PPTC has the most frequent woman leadership of a running club in NYC. (Information provided by Regina Cahill and Doug Olney, 2023)

Introduction Text by: Rachael DePalma (she/her)
Interviewee: Crystal Cun (she/her)
Photos by: Marek Stępniowski, Larry Sillen, and Crystal Cun (as noted)
Produced by: Rachael DePalma

PPTC is a diverse and supportive team. We want to celebrate the diversity of our club and membership. We welcome and encourage everyone to share their stories with us.

Member Spotlight: Crystal Cun