You've found me!

I don’t know about you, but I really enjoy sharing on my friends when they’re doing hard things. I really enjoy cheering on strangers when they are doing hard things. One of the reasons the best day in New York is marathon day is because there are roughly 50,000 people doing something hard and the city comes out to support them.  Last year on Brendan Leonard’s Patreon, I commented that I was going to have a T-shirt printed up for marathon season that said “you’re doing great”. Brendan reached out to me and said he would make the shirt. We then decided to donate 50% of the profits to a charity of my suggestion which was the venture out project.  

I really love this T-shirt. I wear it proudly. You can find it here. You should probably subscribe to Brendan‘s newsletter.  And you should definitely order the T-shirt.  

So… I’m doing a thing. I loved the idea of the burrito league in January. But I didn’t want to run in New Paltz or in Saratoga in January.

I asked around in Troy if setting up our own version of burrito league was possible. Because I received a little bit of positive feedback, I decided to run with it. No pun intended. Hence the creation of the Troy Running League. 

“What is the Troy Running League?” you ask.

It’s evolving. Right now we are running essentially a proof of concept using Mean Max Brew Works in downtown Troy as our “anchor business“. Essentially it’s running a segment over and over and over. This segment is between 3rd Avenue and State Street on River Street in downtown Troy. It is about 400 m. Whoever runs the most segments, spends the most time on the segment, or runs the most days, will win a gift card to the taproom. There’s also a spirit award for the person who best embodies what the month is about. After the month, we move to a different anchor business and it starts all over again.

I’m generating some data for it and we’re getting a good response. I’ve had people reach out to me about sponsorship. Which… Cool. And I’m just trying to have some fun with it. It’s allowed me to reach out to various stakeholders in the Albany area running scene, get their buy-in, and build something new. I think one of the benefits to this is that I’m not trying to make any money on it. I just want it to happen. And I want to support various businesses in downtown Troy.

The secondary reason for it is, I want to show the economic value of the running community in the area. We spend a lot of money. And we tend to spend a lot of money at the same place over and over and over. So the economic impact is not viewed as widely. Doing this shows that we are a force, we are repeat customers, and we contribute to the tax base. Maybe then municipalities will see that making pedestrian friendly infrastructure is a benefit.  To quote The Beach Boys, “wouldn’t it be nice…”