The Usual Prospects: Mike Goettig

Mike Goettig and his wife took the F-train to Brooklyn in 2007, were pleased with the Park Slope community they found, and are now raising their fifteen month old daughter, Cordelia, here. The move to Brooklyn has been accompanied by some great training and racing opportunities for the forty-year old Goettig, who was awarded PPTC’s fastest male runner prize in 2011, and whose 1:28:17 in the Brooklyn Half this year placed him in our top ten finishers.

Though a Minnesota native, Mike has lived in –and run in—places as far afield as Mississippi, where he lived for a year, and China, where he did Peace Corps service from 1996-99, and remained until 2003. (Mike's Peace Corps stint explains why Mandarin is listed as one of his languages on his Facebook page.) Perhaps Mike's 10K loop in China proved an inspiration to local residents. It certainly helped Mike to pick a “transitional goal” for re-entry to the States. Peace Corps volunteers are actually advised to choose such a goal to help them through “reverse culture shock” after spending years outside the country; in Mike’s case that goal became the 2003 Portland Oregon Marathon, Mike’s first.

The marathon distance has proved to be something of a favorite for Mike. He ran his best marathon (so far) in New York in 2011 (a 2:55:50), but also managed to do three marathons in five weeks, one of which was the inaugural Brooklyn Marathon. Mike hopes to run the Berlin Marathon one day.

Mike works full time ---and some long hours—as an attorney, but he has managed to incorporate training into his day by frequently running to or from work. Mike gets to have more company on the Saturday morning runs he enjoys doing in the company of other PPTC members. For Mike, that training is “a great way to spend a Saturday morning.”

Mike speaks very happily about his association with PPTC. He first heard about the Club through Pieter van Hattem and other PPTC members who participated in the group runs from Slope Sports. Mike was involved in the interesting—and out-of-town—Reach the Beach race in 2010, and found PPTC to be a good organization for meeting running partners and forming good relationships. One vivid running memory for Mike is of a long run around Sheepshead Bay which included a gale-force headwind with a group that included PPTC teammates Karen Ziga and Tom Greene. His PPTC friends have helped him to celebrate important moments in his life as well. In anticipation of the birth of his daughter, he and his wife Kathryn were presented with a running stroller which has already helped prepare his daughter for life with a running dad.