NYC Marathon Wrap-Up - From Mike Ring

According to NYRR’s records, 71 members of the Prospect Park Track Club finished the NYC Marathon this year! We had a few runners under 3 hours, many in over 5 hours, and dozens in between.

PPTC does a lot to get our members and our community ready, to the start line, and recovered at the end:

The "Last 10"

This run has always been available to friends of PPTC members, but for the second year in a row, we opened it up to the public.

Running the miles 16 -26.2 of the marathon is not as easy as it sounds when the City does not close the roads. The tricky part is getting from Manhattan to the Bronx. On Marathon Sunday, runners just take the road, but on any other day one has to use the pedestrian lanes. However because the Willis Avenue Bridge is still under construction, the pedestrian lanes are incomplete. So Cecil Burgin and I had to do a little reconnaissance in the week before the run. We took a pleasant walk over the bridge. We took photos and drew arrows. Then we walked back to Manhattan and had a nice lunch. Nobody got lost.

We had about 150 people RSVP that they were going to join us so we expected 300. However, the weather ranged from a cold mist to a 40° horizontal deluge, so only about 150 brave souls showed up. I got more than a few emails asking if our run had a rain date. My answer was “No and neither does the marathon." We almost lost one teammate to hyperthermia, but I think everyone who ran benefited from the run. We knew it could not be wetter and colder on marathon Sunday.

Transportation to the Starting Line

We also had our own transportation to the marathon start. For the second year in a row, we filled four buses, transporting 220 people from JackRabbit Sports on Seventh Avenue to Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island. With a little more marketing we probably could have filled another two or three buses, but enough is enough. We just made sure all PPTC people had the opportunity to sign up first.

Post-Marathon Reception

Our post-marathon reception was once again at PS 87. It is so great to have an indoor place to meet our friends and family. Even cooler is the fact that your teammates are there to give you a spontaneous round of applause when you walk into the room. This year we also arranged for post race massages, Camilo Brooks helped get out some of those knots. I thought he was going to tear me apart, but I do think my Monday and Tuesday were a little better because of him. He can be reached at 718 608 8520 or sunurubu@yahoo.com. We also upgraded our reunion for 2011. Instead of having runners “sign in” on oak tag, we made a video, which will be shared when available.

There is one other thing that the general membership of PPTC might not know about the “reunion school”. It only cost us $80 to rent the cafeteria and the bathrooms. It seems that public schools are mandated to make their facilities available at a low cost to community groups. The Prospect Park Track Club is by definition a community group. I had a conversation with the custodian at PS 87 about this. Of the $80 we pay the Department of Education, the school gets about half of that to cover their payroll expenses which are actually about $250. The PPTC Board decided to make a $200 donation to the PS 87 PTA. It is the least we can do for our community,

We hope that all our runners and their supporters had a great time. We look forward to making next year’s event equally rewarding.

I would also like to thank all the volunteers who made this happen. Many people thanked me, but I would like to thank you.