About GHTC

A hill is a good metaphor for an effort that leads to success. Runners find hills useful as real-life topography, too. At the Great Hill Track Club, we'll use them in both ways.

Hilltops can be exhilarating, and climbing up to one is also satisfying, strengthening, and instructive. You can see farther from there, including back down to where you started. We named this running group after Central Park's toughest, steepest hill because we've found that when people become athletes, they reverse the typical attitude toward difficult tasks: rather than avoid them, they value and even embrace them. Our hope and goal is for GHTC members to get better at climbing all sorts of hills.

Despite certain connotations of the name, the Great Hill Track Club isn't a team in the strict sense, but we want it to feel like one. Our coaches work to provide the elements of a great team: nuts-and-bolts essentials like experience, skill, and expert guidance, and intangibles like respect, reliability, compassion, and camaraderie. And we'd like to think that we can be fun and friendly as well as fierce and fast. 

Our format will be one that I've had success with as a coach of high school, college, and open teams. We'll list particulars elsewhere; as for general principles, we'll start with these:

• People run for many reasons, and the reasons can change. We want to treat our members as individuals whose history, present situation, and goals are vitally important.

• We'll save the racing for the races, which will make those races faster. Hard work is a necessity for distance runners; racing in workouts is a pitfall that we'll avoid by working together instead of competing—even with ourselves—in training.

• We emphasize commitment and improvement over fast times, which are relative. (Has anyone tried the Kipchoge Challenge?) Of the many kinds of achievement, few are rewarded with trophies, prize money, or fame. We look for subtler accomplishments: improved strength or balance, a corral jump or a high age-grade, a healed injury, even a personal worst in horrible conditions. (How does Des Linden feel about her really slow time at the 2018 Boston Marathon?)

• We try to have open minds; no training plan or shoe brand fits everyone, and absolutes tend to look absolutely wrong after a while. We won't scoff at your goal of running a marathon per week or the Western States 100, but we might recommend some extra mileage.

Lastly (for now), we think that a coach should be available for consultation outside the workouts. We have a Facebook page where questions can be asked and answered. GHTC also offers training plans for specific events and longer periods. If you'd like advice from someone who's been around the block and the track a few times, please e-mail greathilltc@gmail.com.