The Cherry Tree 10-Miler is held on President’s weekend each February and is known as “a race for the hardcore” due to its length in the middle of winter.
Photo by William Ngo

When I first joined the Prospect Park Track Club, I wondered about the name of our winter race, the Cherry Tree 10-miler. I dimly thought it had something to do with the Botanic Garden’s cherry blossoms, or maybe those trees close to the top of Battle Pass Hill between the loop and Long Meadow that are pink for a minute every spring—but when I thought about it more clearly, this explanation didn’t make sense. Brooklyn’s cherry trees generally bloom in late April, not mid-February, and anyway those trees close to the top of Battle Pass Hill are magnolias, not cherry trees. It was my stepmother who pointed out the obvious, that the race is held on Presidents Day weekend and so has to do with the legend of a six-year-old George Washington cutting a cherry tree with a hatchet and then confessing to his father, “I cannot tell a lie,” when he was found out.

Volunteers bundled up to stay warm while working the water station at the 2019 Cherry Tree Race.
Photo by PaFoua Hang

Given my mind’s historical bent (it runs in my family), I had other questions about the Cherry Tree 10-miler. Mainly, I wanted to know: why host a ten-mile race in February, of all months? Answering this question led to many other questions. It involved searches of this blog, the Internet, and the Ted Corbitt Archives as well as conversations (over email and the phone) with longtime Race Committee member Doug Olney, who was very generous with his time.

PPTC’s Cherry Tree 10-miler got its start in 1996. Bobby Fisher, the club president at the time, advocated sponsoring races to increase the visibility of Prospect Park Track Club. There was no local long-distance midwinter race then, so the club decided to put one on the calendar on Presidents Day weekend. It was advertised as a tune-up for the Brooklyn Half Marathon, which was then typically held in March or April.

The 2024 Cherry Tree Race
Photo by Samuel M. Trimble

Its name is a tribute to another race that was once held in New York City on or around Presidents Day weekend: the Cherry Tree Marathon, a predecessor to the NYC Marathon. Held on Washington’s Birthday, February 22, 1959, the first Cherry Tree Marathon was among the first races organized by New York Road Runners, founded as the Road Runners Club–New York Association (RRC-NYA) in June of the previous year. This marathon began and ended in Macombs Dam Park, near Yankee Stadium, and comprised (if I correctly understand the description provided by NYC Parks) three out-and-backs on Sedgwick Avenue. Ted Corbitt, RRC-NYA’s first president, won.

By the time of Prospect Park Track Club’s inaugural Cherry Tree race, New York Road Runners’ Cherry Tree Marathon was very much a thing of the past; in 1969 it shifted from a February to a March race, and in 1973 its name was changed to the Earth Day Marathon. So our race, to be run for the thirtieth time this month, has proven to be much longer lived. No surprise there—racing three loops around Prospect Park in February is pretty hardcore; imagine running a marathon in the Northeast at this time of year!

The 2024 Cherry Tree Relay sign stuck in snow from the largest winter storm seen that year.
Photo by Chris Burris

At first, the Cherry Tree 10-miler was a much smaller race than it is now. Running all ten miles solo was the only option, and about one or two hundred runners participated each year. Participation grew after the relay option was added in 2005. Now runners can choose to participate as members of a relay team or to run all three laps around Prospect Park on their own. Of those who register—up to 1,200 people can register, though the race generally does not sell out—about two-thirds run the ten miles solo. No relay team has ever finished before all the solo runners.

The race has been held in all types of weather that midwinter can throw at us, including rain, snow, and temperatures well below freezing. One year, Doug recalls, PPTC had to cancel the race as originally planned due to a blizzard, but Prospect Park was able to offer an alternative date in March. Another year, the race day temperature was around 0°F, but PPTC held the race all the same, with one modification: instead of passing the baton, relay teams started together at the same time and had their times added up for their final score. In 2020, the race was held before Covid restrictions began, and in 2021, the race was held virtually.

In 2022, The Cherry Tree Race was held for the first time since the pandemic began. There were many signs of change, such as people standing further apart or wearing masks, signage in the park, etc. Here’s the crew of volunteer cyclists from that year all wearing their coveted “Cherry Tree” PPTC volunteer jackets.
Photo by Larry Sillen

What has delighted me most while exploring the past of the city’s Cherry Tree races has been discovering the material details—the actual stuff—of road racing. I’m glad to know, for example, that from the beginning, slap bracelets have been used as relay team batons. Or, as Doug told me, that the Cherry Tree 10-miler used to begin and end by the Picnic House and “didn’t have an elaborate finish line structure or anything like that”; he remembers that a garbage can was used as the finish line “because it was there.” When you signed up for a race, Doug reminded me, you had to fill out a form and mail it with a check, which meant that race organizers had to do a lot of work by hand and bring batches of checks to deposit at the bank. I grew up before the era of the World Wide Web, so none of this should surprise me. Yet, when I was trying to figure out when the last Cherry Tree Marathon was held, I was nevertheless shocked to see the digital image of a single-spaced, typewritten New York Road Runner newsletter. Gary Corbitt shared a photograph of the mimeograph machine that made copies of this newsletter when he presented at our monthly meeting in February; he said that it sat on the family’s dining room table.

Sometimes I miss the relative scrappiness of road racing when I first started, in 2002. But I am glad that the community has expanded to welcome participation as well as competition—how else would it have occurred to me, a poet and former theater kid, even to have gotten involved? Doug agrees with me. Regarding the Cherry Tree 10-miler, he says, “It’s been fun to see it evolve and get bigger.”

The start line at the Cherry Tree 10-Miler Race in 2023.
Photo by Dylan Wells

Written by: Rachael Nevins (she/her)
Photos by: Will Ngo, PaFoua Hang, Samuel M. Trimble, Chris Burris, Larry Sillen, and Dylan Wells as credited above
Produced by: Rachael DePalma (she/her)

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The Cherry Tree Race and Its History