The Rule of Three: Three Years of Northeast Track Club

“The Rule of Three: Ideas, thoughts, events, characters, or sentences that are presented in threes are more effective and memorable.”

Year 1: Jumped a fence during a pandemic to run with friends. Runners and aspiring runners multiply each week. Realized this is a haven for people during an isolating time and understand there is now a responsibility to keep offering this to the DC community. Added some structure (an Instagram, a schedule, some pacers). Navigated our first of too many scenarios to protect our community and make difficult leadership decisions. Prevailed. Got stronger.

Year 2: A website. A revamped logo with a powerful story. Launching a team chat group (Discord) to keep in touch about runs, which has turned into a 1,000 person community in itself. Brands reached out to offer us partnerships for gear and opportunities to co-host events and bring them to DC. Recognition of the hard work that had been put in and the differentiators that set us apart. Momentum. Growth that demanded a permit for an exclusive track on Tuesday nights. Bigger numbers demanded even more structure. Captains evolved to senior captains. Pacers were added to meet a wider range of pace groups. Exponential growth led to exponential opportunities.

Year 3: More difficult leadership decisions to protect our crew and maintain the integrity we were founded on. Tremendous growth and respect from the community and from brand partners. Stronger relationships with the running community at large, including with other run crews in DC, the US, and globally. Evolution of events we started in years 1 and 2, and new events designed and delivered entirely by us.

The Rule of Three: In these three years of consistent behavior, hard work, creativity, and integrity, we have established ourselves as an effective and memorable community in DC and globally, and plan to only continue to grow and offer this space to all runners.

As we have always said, thank you to our runners for finding us and for staying with us. We can’t wait to meet all of our runners that are yet to join, and we look forward to continuing to #embracechaos (a nod to our pandemic start) for decades to come.