Sunday, October 10, 2010

Most Competitive Brooklyn Club?

There was a query a little while ago: What's the most competitive Brooklyn club if you want to be racing?

At varying age levels, competitive is all relative. And, frankly, sometimes getting out the door for five days a week can be seen as competitive. So let me define this before answering, and opening the door for any comments:

Competitive, in my mind, is a mission within the club to support runners as they seek to achieve faster and faster and goals, and also achieve certain team goals. Within Manhattan, for example, Central Park Track Club is a competitive team, with an application to join.

I have tons of conflicts in answering this question, so please take with a grain of salt:

*If you're a superfast male (at this point, let's say you have aspirations for a sub-1:25 half or a sub 3 marathon), I'd go with North Brooklyn Runners or Brooklyn Road Runners

*If you're a superfast female, I'd go with Prospect Park Track Club, which has greater depth than the others.

There are plenty of options out there for runners - look at the club Web sites, go for training runs with the teams, get a sense of what's the most comfortable. Geographically, you may not find a fit, so be willing to travel a bit.

Also, go to NYRR and look at the race results: See how the various runners are placing. Just because the runners are placing doesn't mean that you're able to run with them - we all have unique schedules, so top runners may not be reaching group runs.

I'd love it if club representatives would make a case as to why they are the most competitive Brooklyn club - feel free to send an e-mail, or post a response.

5 comments:

chickenunderwear said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
chickenunderwear said...

Some of my teammates my disagree, but I don't want to be the most competitive Brooklyn Club. We were that in the 1970s. Now, I want to be the most welcoming, supportive club in Brooklyn. Running clubs in general a not always about competition, the are about community.

Check out my blog post from last week.

http://pptcblog.blogspot.com/2010/10/what-you-do-not-know-because-you-are.html

Michael Ring
Membership Chair; PPTC
membership@pptc.org

Anonymous said...

Hey I was the original "track club" poster and I appreciate you creating this post. I'll be sure to check them both out.

sassafrasssls said...

If you are talking about a club being competitive in the way that was described in the original post, then Prospect Park Track Club is not competitive. If you are talking about people posting some pretty good times for being people with full-time jobs, then that's a different story.
Part of why I like PPTC, being a member, is because there isn't a cut-throat mentality around the runs we do together. We have fun on those runs and, sometimes, we get into some friendly competition.

Anonymous said...

The North Brooklyn Runners seem to be getting faster at every race, with no idea of when they will stop. The mens team is by far the most competitive in the plainest definition of the word: they are finishing at the top of their division at every race. The women are also putting up a good fight, being 7th out of 30+ teams in NYRR, and though they lack the depth that other teams might have, they have a lot of potential in being such a young team. I do think that PPTC has the shorter distances, and have a good hold on the Brooklyn running scene because they have been around for quite some time. But, in terms of being competitive in the scope of NYRR racing, I have to say North Brooklyn takes it.