About the Falmouth Track Club
Falmouth Track Club Activities
The Falmouth Track Club offers many events during the year. The Annual Hangover Classic Run held each January 1st is actually a fun run. You can run any distance you please, you are guaranteed a prize (which is usually a surprise) and there is lots of food.
The Annual Meeting is held in the early part of January of each year, date, time and place will be announced in Newsletter and posted on the “Events” page of the web site, before the end of the year. The monthly meetings are also posted on the web site. Membership dues run from January 1 st to December 31 st. The mailing label on your newsletter will indicate the expiration date.
During the winter months, club members open up their homes for Sunday Fun Runs. This is a great opportunity to run in different areas, but you should definitely return before others have consumed all the breakfast food. We gather at that person’s home at 8 a.m. People contribute to the food supply. Dates and places are listed on the website.
The Seagull Six Race (almost 6 miles) starting in Woods Hole is always scheduled for the beginning of April and is sponsored by the Track Club.
The FTC sponsors a “Bridge Run” before the Mid-April Boston Marathon for those in training for that event. Runners start at the Bourne Bridge area and run to Woods Hole (20 miles). Some choose to run part of the course. Details can be found on the Calendar of Events on this website.
Ten Boston Marathon Waivers are available to FTC runners. The qualifications and procedure for applying is posted on the website when numbers become available.
In May Track Club members help with the cleanup of the Falmouth Streets by picking up trash along Jones Road. Coffee and bagels at the Cape Cod Bagel Shop are guaranteed once the job is finished.
The Track Club sponsors a cookout, usually in July where people congregate after the Friday run for food, etc. We've had as many as 65 members turn out.
A Summer youth running program is held during July and August for young people who have completed grades 3 through 12. Individualized training to improve running technique is offered. Details can be found on the Calendar of Events on this website for the appropriate month.
The Track Club also sponsors the Main Street Mile. It is a great event because it involves all ages, from small toddlers to grandparents. It is also an opportunity to give The Directors a hand by volunteering at this event, which is held in early September.
Our next big event is the Cape Cod Marathon and Relay. This is a great weekend – 1200 runners and almost 200 relay teams come into Town and hundreds of volunteers are needed. You can run the marathon, put a relay team together or be part of the excitement by volunteering. Be sure to go to the Cape Cod Marathon website for the latest.
Year round Track Workouts are held at Falmouth High School on Wednesday evening at 5:30. Anne and Jim Preisig, who organize these workouts, will definitely get you up and going. A small donation is involved and E-mails are sent out weekly by them, so be sure to get on their list (Jim's email address appears below on this page) if you are interested in participating.
The Friday night Coffee O Five-Mile Race starts at Falmouth Town Hall parking lot at 5:30 year round. There is no entry fee and runners time themselves. Added to this weekly event is a 2.4-mile walk which starts at the same time and place as the run.
Four to five times a year a Newsletter is sent to members, which keeps you abreast of Track Club happenings. Anyone can contribute articles to this newsletter and help is always needed to get it mailed.
We also have a website (duh! you're on it) and contributions of any sort are welcome, especially pictures of events featuring FTC runners. Contact Joanne Corsano joanne@picturelake.com to contribute, if you find any broken links, or have any corrections.
If you have questions about the any of the events, contact any of the officers (names and e-mail addresses below on this page).
There are many opportunities to become involved, especially in volunteering at upcoming events, either before or during the event. Just let us know what you would like to do. It is also a great way to meet other runners and members.
Bylaws
Click here for the Falmouth Track Club Bylaws.
Meeting Minutes
Click here for the minutes from the FTC Meetings
Personnel
Falmouth Track Club History
The Falmouth Track Club was born in 1972. It was the brainchild of John Carroll, Falmouth High School girls' track and cross country coach. Carroll began the FTC so that his HS girls could compete as a team in AAU events around New England and the East Coast. At this time there were no girls' high school cross country or indoor programs in existence. The FTC girls were very successful, so successful that the FTC placed third in the 1976 USA Women's Indoor Championships at Madison Sq. Garden in NYC. The club sponsored competitions for girls in cross country, indoor track and summer programs in Junior Olympics, AAU Junior Regional meets, as well as All-Comers meets. An extensive youth program was also conducted each summer.
At this time Carroll was not only the HS girls' track coach but also the Co-Director of the Falmouth Road Race, which was the primary source of funding to send qualified girls to track meets when there were no high school girls' programs. This allowed the high school girls the ability to train and compete at track meets year round with no cost to them. The adult running group in the area, called the Seagull Striders, and Carroll got together in the late '70s when Carroll became aware that the Falmouth Track Club and the Falmouth Road Race could not legally have interlocking directors. So Carroll talked to the Seagull Striders, and he gave up responsibility for the club as the two groups merged into one club ... the Falmouth Track Club.
In 1978, the FTC began two of their classic races, the Cape Cod Marathon, as a Boston qualifier on a cold, windy course out at the Otis Airbase, and a special little Boston tune-up, the Seagull Six FTC Spring Classic.
Born as a child of both the running boom and the social protests of the late '70s, the Seagull Six Spring Classic is a colorful and challenging race early in the spring season, the first or second Sunday in April. As former race director and race historian Fred Keller recounts, "But haven't you ever wondered how an obscure, little race like the Seagull evolved? Truth is, it started as a 'protest race,' in 1978, to draw attention to the evils of PAVE-PAWS radar site being built at Otis AFB. A small, but feisty group of local runner/hippie types known as the Seagull Striders, led by Karen and Henry Smith-Rohrberg and Betty Fuller, decided to stage the race as a fund raiser to help carry on the struggle." It was shortly after the Seagull Six was born when John Carroll suggested that the 'Striders' and his own running group should combine into one club ... making this special little race a catalyst for what we now know as the Falmouth Track Club.
Keller surmised that the 'six-mile' loop, starting and ending in front of the Woods Hole firehouse, and laid out around Woods Hole, was measured by whatever well-worn car Karen Smith-Rohrberg drove back then. The first race participants, thrilled with their six-mile PRs, were brought back to earth with the later discovery that the course actually measures only 5.74 miles.
In 1979, overtaken just at the finish line to come in second overall, was the race's most famous (runner) participant, Lynn Jennings, then just a high school student. Most years the race draws between 150-200 participants, although entries have reached as high as over 300. In 1983, Jack Weiss introduced the famous and much treasured Seagull Six glass mug (if you haven't seen one, you haven't been hosted for a meal by a Falmouth Track Club member). The race headquarters remains the drafty, but charming Woods Hole firehouse, warmed by sweating bodies consuming post race refreshments. A fitness walk was added in 1994, the Falmouth VNA's 'Walk for Well Women projects.' In 2008 a webpage devoted to the race was created.
Only within recent years did race directors Pete Sampson and Mike Norton break the long-standing tradition of giving out awards twelve months after the event! Mike Norton currently is the race director of this popular and challenging race. If you are looking for a good opener for your spring racing season, look no further than the Seagull Six.
The Cape Cod Marathon also debuted in 1978, over a four loop course at Otis Air Base on a bitterly cold December day. A few years later in 1984, it was proposed that the course be moved to the Town of Falmouth. A debate ensued within the Falmouth Track Club, with one of the main issues of relocating the race being the fear that the marathon organizers would never get enough volunteers for the new course. Holding the race on roads in Falmouth instead of the self-contained base would require hundreds more volunteers and, it was feared, constitute a logistical nightmare. But the skeptics were proven wrong. Today the marathon runs through the villages of Falmouth and more than 700 volunteers are out there making it happen. In the past four years there have been volunteers from 27 states.
From its modest beginnings it has become one of the most prestigious regional marathons. Runners' World has identified it as among the ten most scenic marathons held in the United States, and New England Runner bestowed its 1996 Road Race of the Year award on the race. The Cape Cod Marathon has been the USATF-New England Championship 20 times out of the past 21 years. It is the final of seven events comprising the USATF-NE Grand Prix series. In 2007 there were 70 Ironrunners, those who complete all seven events in the series, entered in the CCM. The same year the appeal of the CCM was shown by the number of repeat entrants; twenty-one percent of the field had run the race before.
The Cape Cod Marathon is one of the largest club-organized running events in New England. In a day when most larger road races are professionally managed, the Cape Cod Marathon remains true to its roots. It is an all-volunteer effort, and the engine that drives the train is the Falmouth Track Club. Race director Courtney Bird has been involved in that capacity since 1982. There is a race committee of 30 people who organize it all. Each member has a specific area of responsibility - course management, start-finish area, medical, water stops, publicity, registration and results, etc. The committee member is responsible for lining up all volunteers necessary for his or her area. The emphasis was on delegation of responsibility. The water stop director is not responsible for lining up all people to staff the 10 stations along the course, but rather to find 10 captains - one for each stop - and charge them with the job of lining up a crew for that particular stop. The idea was to keep the responsibilities manageable so that good people were not burned out, to broaden the volunteer participation as much as possible, and to make involvement with the race fun. Read more about it on the Cape Cod Marathon website.
In 1993 in order to increase participation in the race, a five-leg relay was added to the marathon, modeled after the successful relay run at the Vermont City Marathon. Today nearly 200 relay teams compete in the marathon and the relay is usually closed out a month or more before race day, and it has broadened the participation in the marathon to many more runners who prefer not to tackle the entire course.
Running a race in late October (or even November or December, when the race was run in its early years before settling to its current end-of-October Sunday date) can bring challenging weather. In 1987, a 12" snowfall three days before the race. In 1988, 40 mph headwinds along Surf Drive that sandblasted the runners in the last two miles of the course. In 1991, a course that was partially obliterated (Surf Drive) as a result of Hurricane Bob. In 1992, a driving rain and 38-degree temperatures. Several times when torrential rains and high winds on the Saturday before the race gave way to cloudless skies and ideal running conditions on Sunday. In 2006, the danger that the race would actually have to be cancelled because of debris, sand, and waist-deep puddles remaining on the course from the previous day's storm, when only the heroics of the town DPW, who worked through the night to clear the course, enabled the race to be run at all.
The Main Street Mile, started in 1981, has been a success from its beginning. The founders of the event, the Hard Core Mothers, were parents of Falmouth High School Boys' Cross Country Team members coached by Tom Turkington. They envisioned a running event in which the whole family and runners of all ages and abilities could participate. They organized the race through 1987. In 1988, Helen Kennedy took over race directorship and she continued to provide leadership through 2002, when Steve Hamel took over for two years. For the past two year, the directors have been Patti O'Brien and Dana DeLorme.
The Main Street Mile is run early in September. Originally the course began at the Village Green, ran down Main Street, and ended at the Gus Canty Recreation Center. In 2005, a new one-mile course was introduced. As in the previous years, the race began at the Village Green and runners ran east down Main Street, but then they turned right onto Walker Street and finished at the beach parking lot on Surf Drive. The decision to change the course was based on safety concerns due to increased activity on Main Street. In 2008 a page devoted to the race was added to this website.
Families are encouraged to participate in the event, and many families return year after year. Runners come in all sizes and ages. In 2005, for example, the youngest and oldest finishers were 2 and 74 years of age. Multiple generations run the race, and some pulled in awards in every generation.
In 1997 longstanding club member Ken Gartner borrowed (and improved on) an idea from the Cape Cod Athletic Club, who had been holding a fun run on Friday evenings in Hyannis, and laid out a 5-mile course starting at Town Hall Square on Main Street in Falmouth. Virtually without exception, every Friday since then, at 5:30 sharp, FTC and other runners have left Town Hall Square in the Friday Night Coffee-O Five Miler. The numbers swell in the summer months as summer visitors join the year-round diehards. There is no fee and the runners time themselves, and both the Falmouth Enterprise and Cape Cod Times print the names of the top finishers.
Because of the equipment the club has acquired over the years and the club's considerable race organizing expertise, the FTC has decided to make a race timing service available to other area races. Races as far away as Wellfleet or Plympton have utilized this service. Those who do this work volunteer their time, and fees charged go to support the work of the track club.
While the primary objective of the FTC is to promote running and running related activities, the FTC is pleased to support local charities from the proceeds of each of its races. In 2006-2007 events (from the October CCM of 2006 though the September Main Street Mile of 2007) the Falmouth Track Club has donated over $20,000.00 to buy equipment for local high school athletic teams, to support Penikese Island School, Falmouth Service Center, Cape Cod Free Clinic, Fairwinds Clubhouse and others.