Steve Lastoe, he of NYCRuns, is fine-tuning the Inter-Club Challenge pretty much as the Constitutional Convention fine-tuned the Articles of Confederation. He’s creating a new, better structure.
We spoke about it a bit on last Sunday’s episode of the New York Running Show, which in turn followed a meeting held at Steve’s place for representatives of a number of local clubs, and two of my friends, Paul and Amy, were among the attendees.
As background, there is the NYRR’s Club Series. It is a series of NYRR races of varying distances — the races are selected each year by the Club Council — in which points are awarded to teams (including age-group divisions) throughout the year and at year’s end champions are crowned. It’s one of the best things that NYRR does, and when I ran its races I essentially only ran club races, knowing that most of the other competitive folks in my age group would be there.
A number of club runners, however, have bristled at the NYRR structure, and the crowding of races and early entry deadlines. Not that they will abandoning them in the future, but the idea of an alternative series is appealing. After all, the Club Series works because of the runners who show up, not the organization that puts on its races.
How the races are to be scored in the NYCRuns series remains to be decided. But the basic idea is this: Every race put on by a club, such as VCTC’s Riverdale Ramble and CPTC’s Founders’ Run, will be included in the series. I don’t know whether there will be a commitment obligation of participating clubs, but the idea will be that mutual support for these races will exist. Insofar as there are races outside of NYC, such as the Rye Derby put on by Taconic, it may be that they rotate, e.g., every year there will be one or more races from among Westchester, Nassau, and Bergen Counties, but dealing with them is not a front-burner issue.
NYCRuns hopes to benefit by having a formal relationship with these races (as it does, e.g., for the CPTC race) and may add certain other races to the mix.
Again, the concept is based on the idea that if-you-build-it/they-will-come, the “it” being a quality series of races, the “they” being club runners.
It’s exciting. Steve’s having another meeting in early December, shortly before the Ekiden, which is as a separate matter a great event for clubs.
Given the momentous nature of the meeting, Steve hired someone to record it. I don’t see Amy though:
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October 25, 2012 at 5:06 pm
Amy
November 6, 2012 at 11:14 pm
cg9m
relieved to see that most of this new club series will be held in the nyc boroughs. i’ve previously stated my fear that it would spill out to the ‘burbs and destroy the community feel of events there. it’s one thing to have a handful of super-competitive people show up for a small town race, and quite another to have an event dominated by them. i think a large city-runner contingent could very well ruin a formerly pleasant experience. i’ll point to the fairfield half as an example. i ran that race in prep for the sf marathon a few years ago. it is the biggest mess of an event outside of manhattan in which i’ve participated. the only good things were that they had enough water (partly b/c of residents hosing people off on the course) to cool people down, and water/gatorade stops. at least when i went thru (several thousand participants). but there were separate starts for men/women (different streets!) and when they merged it was utter chaos. the streets were too small to handle the volume of runners. it was insane. i won’t even get into the bus system to the start. ugh. times ten. miserable miserable experience. oh- no start mats, either. but i bet it was a wonderful course (and race!) back in the day.
and you want to do that to rye derby. that makes me so sad. (i feel like the lorax!). i think that event was already ruined by the change in start time. even were i still a resident, i wouldn’t run it. it was held in the afternoon to accommodate the crowd for which it was targeted. the race is a fundraiser for the ymca “healthy kids” initiative- raising money for kids’ sports. i think the start time allowed for families to attend religious services in the am, and run the race in the pm. the problem became that they offered ‘decent’ prize money. and that attracted the “serious”. and now it seems the race is geared more for them. that’s awful. i looked at results post-change, and overall participation is down by about 100 runners. maybe you think you can change that by creating a displaced/disgruntled nyrr manhattanite circus of your “type-a” crowd. great. i guess rye ymca can benefit from raised entry fees. businesses can benefit from extra patronage. but what happens when it becomes a fairfield type event? another zoo? the ‘great cow harbor race’ out on long island has successfully dealt with this sort of thing, having wave starts, and puts on a decent event, considering. but it’s not a “small town” race. it’s just a better production than fairfield.
at least there’s still the rye rec turkey trot 5-ish miler. since the distance is slightly off (5.2), maybe that’ll remain safe from the doberman-rottweiler breeds.
November 10, 2012 at 9:14 pm
Steve Lastoe
I think there is a good opportunity to do something similar in Westchester/Putnum and I will explore that as well. If I ever have free time again!