Key Notices

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE ON NYRR SCORING RACES

Each year, the NYRR (in consultation with club representatives) designates about twelve races as team scoring races.  The overall club standings for the year are based on each club's position in these races.  For more details about this club competition, please refer to www.nyrrc.org/runningclubs/clubpoints.html.

We want to assure our members that their contribution to our scoring teams in these races has absolutely nothing to do with their value to our club.  Our main raison d'etre is and always has been to provide structured workouts and a friendly, supportive atmosphere to enable each individual to achieve his or her potential as a runner.

Within this context, this notice is also to convey to our members our club's view on the importance of the NYRR's annual scoring-race series.

We are a competitive running club, and as such it makes sense that our members be encouraged to run in these scoring races.  They take place regularly, they are conveniently located, and they are some of the highest-quality races in the New York City area.  They also provide us with an incentive to compete against one another and other teams, and they give each of our runners pride in being part of one of the top teams in the city.

However, whether you can be a regular scorer for the team or not, these races are a fairly random collection of distances and no one should feel pressured to run in them just because they are scoring races.  Instead we encourage our members to do their best to incorporate them into their schedule when that makes sense to their overall training goals.

There are many facets to CPTC, and many kinds of competitions in which our members take part.  The NYRR series is a valuable opportunity for our distance and middle-distance runners to compete and excel, and our current high placings are evidence of the quality of our training programs.  Recent successes in indoor and outdoor track, marathons, biathlons, triathlons, and many more events are other such evidence, and the CPTC members who concentrate on those areas are equally central to the team and its goals.

The NYRR scoring series remains a valuable medium through which all CPTC members can compete together, from first finisher to last.  We all contribute to one another's success, whatever our event or pace per mile.  That is the intrinsic value of a team.

PRESIDENT’S MESSAGE ON PACING

This message is to clarify to our members what is and what is not illegal pacing in road races.

Firstly, there is in fact no pacing rule, per se, anymore.  This was replaced by the assistance to athletes rule a few years ago.  The actual rule is written as follows:

RULE 66:  ASSISTANCE TO ATHLETES
1. Except as provided in road races (Rule 132) and in long distance walking events (Rule 150), during the progress of an event a competitor who has received any assistance whatsoever from any other person may be disqualified by the Referee. "Assistance" is the conveying of advice, information or direct help to an athlete by any means, including a technical device.  It also includes pacing in running or walking events by persons not participating in the event, by competitors lapped or about to be lapped, or by any kind of technical device.  It does not include participation of an officially designated pacesetter in the race.

NOTE 1:  Pacesetting by a person entered in an event for that purpose is permitted.
NOTE 2:  Competitors may carry or wear articles of personal equipment such as wrist chronometers and heart rate monitors.

What this means is that if you are watching the race, advice and information to athletes in the race such as "there's someone 10 yards behind you" is technically not allowed.  Basically you are allowed to support and cheer and little else.  Pacing by someone not in the race is explicitly prohibited.  (If you are not in the race you are certainly not allowed on the race course – this should be thought of in exactly the same way as spectators are not allowed on a football field during a game.)  Pacing by someone in the race, however, is not explicitly prohibited unless it can be shown to be illegal assistance.

Nobody is going to enforce this rule for the mid-pack runner.  However none of us are mid-pack runners – we are a competitive running team with individual runners and teams who often win races.  This, naturally enough puts more focus on CPTC, and we all need to make sure that we are competing within the rules.

CPTC POLICY ON ACCEPTING MEMBERS FROM OTHER TEAMS

All members of the Central Park Track Club should be aware of the club's policy concerning recruiting people from other local running clubs. No one should try to encourage anyone from any other local running club to leave that club and to join the Central Park Track Club.  However, if for whatever reason a person has left or intends to leave their club and is interested in joining CPTC, then it is OK to talk to them about what our club offers and the procedure for joining CPTC.  The important distinction here is that the initial approach must NOT come from us.

If CPTC receives a membership application from someone who is leaving, or has left their team, we will contact their team leader to make sure that they are aware of the situation.  If that leader objects to that person joining CPTC and we determine that unfair recruiting has taken place we will not accept their application at that time.  We will not reconsider a subsequent application from that person until at least three months has elapsed from the date of the initial application.

Let's remember that we are one of the larger running teams in the New York area and it is not in our interests to expand by recruiting people from other smaller teams.  We welcome a large number of vibrant, active teams in the area in order to enhance the level of team competition and inter-club rivalry.