The biggest daytime social event of this weekend in Northampton takes place tomorrow in the main hall of Union Station. It’s the annual meeting of the Sugarloaf Mountain Athletic Club, featuring a group run followed by brunch, a guest speaker, awards for members’ accomplishments in the past year, and the amiable conversations of people with a common interest in running, never mind how far or how fast.
If you’re a SMAC member already signed up for this party, I’ll see you there. If you’re a member, forgot that tomorrow was the day, but want to attend, just come. (Apologizing briefly for having neglected to register in advance is entirely up to you.)
If you’re not a member already but the idea of being in a running club appeals to you, you are welcome to show up and join on the spot. Besides the fact that you’ll get fed and entertained immediately, imagine any of the following reasons to be part of such an organization:
Meeting people. As of last month, Sugarloaf had 402 members, most from Northampton, Amherst, Greenfield and environs, a few scattered across the state, and a handful living elsewhere. Members meet at races, either because they’re running or because they’ve volunteered to register entrants, hand out water, monitor intersections along the route, etc. The Sugarloaf Sun, the club’s bimonthly newsletter, is rich with personality in the form of articles by members and by editor Ben Kimball’s superb photos of your friends, and of people you’d never heard of before the latest issue arrived in your email.
Motivation. Find running buddies who’ll get you out onto the road or trail regularly. For more structure, come to the weekly workouts on the indoor track at Smith College, where coach Dan Smith leads warmup stretches and then sends you, with others of comparable speed, around the oval in interval runs. You’ll learn a lot about yourself.
Information about upcoming events. Besides the newsletter, club membership gets you weekly emails listing races in the area and providing links to register.
Competition. In the annual SMAC race series, you get points based on your finishing times and places. Awards at the next annual meeting go not only to the top point-scorers but also to everyone who completes at least half the series’ 10 events, which range in distance from 5K to 10 miles. In several races, members compete for team prizes.
Sunday’s group run, charmingly called a “casual run,” is a trot along the bike path, starting at Union Station at 10 a.m. Brunch starts at 11. This year’s guest speaker is Kayla Lampe of Shelburne Falls, an emergency room nurse whose athletic accomplishments include qualifying for the U.S. women’s Olympic Trials marathon and winning the grueling 2024 Mt. Washington Road Race.
Visit sugarloafmountainathletic.org for more information. Annual membership is $30 for an individual, $40 for couples and families. The indoor track workouts are on Tuesdays, 6:30-8 p.m. through Feb. 24.
Two other running clubs that overlap with Sugarloaf in territory and in opportunities are Empire One and the Greater Springfield Harriers. Based in Westfield and holding its own annual banquet on Feb. 7, Empire One sponsors summer races in Stanley Park and at Holyoke’s Ashley Reservoir. Individual membership is $25 ($20 for anyone 17 or younger); family membership is $35. As a bonus, EORC members can earn partial reimbursements of entry fees (which have been getting pretty high lately) in selected races. See empireonerunningclub.org.
You could join all three of these clubs and not have to choose which club’s winter banquet to attend. The Greater Springfield Harriers’ dinner this year is on Jan. 24. The Harriers sponsor Springfield’s Big 4th race along with weekly winter and summer races in Forest Park. They organize training runs focused on 5K and 10K racing, send members to high-profile races in the U.S. and abroad, and own Fast Feet, a running store with branches on two Elm Streets, one in West Springfield and another in Westfield. Visit harriers.org.
If you’re interested in joining an identifiable group of runners but think these large clubs sound too organized, find the Facebook page of the Shutesbury Coffee Cake Running Club. AI – inevitably Time magazine’s “person of the year” is invading running clubs – describes the Coffee Cakers as “a diverse running group in Western Massachusetts known for its casual, social runs often ending with coffee/cake. (Note repetition of that appealing word “casual.”)
As one comment on the club’s page puts it, “Running won’t change anything except your attitude about everything.”
John Stifler has taught writing in economics at UMass and has written extensively for running magazines and newspapers. He can be reached at jstifler@umass.edu.