Mexican American Running Club
of
Arizona 
Today!
The Mexican American Running Club was founded in 1994 by Rudy Garcia and
Pete Ramirez in the heart of Mexico, el ciudad de Mexico. Pete and
Rudy were part of a group of invited marathon runners from Arizona.
The group was invited along with other groups throughout the country (Los
Angeles, New York City, Dallas, Denver, Chicago, San Antonio, etc.) to
run the Mexico City Marathon. Since running that marathon the two
have organized their modest club with the help of the Arizona Road Racers
(www.arizonaroadracers.com).
Pete and Rudy have both served on the board of ARR and are still learning
about running club organization and management with the help of Mike Sheedy
(current ARR President).
MEMBERSHIP
Membership into the club is $5.00 per year. This fee is mainly to
cover cost of postage and printing of the monthly newsletter. A company
may join for a $25.00 per year fee. This helps cover the same postage
expense, but also includes the addition of the company name and logo on
the back of each newsletter. T-shirts for the club are currently
$15.00 or two for $25.00. They come in white, ash or black, large
and xlarge (the large run small). Call or email to verify what's
in stock ( rudygarcia@uswest.net or
sierragp@prodigy.com ). For shipping
add and additional $5.00.
RUNNING LOCATIONS &
TIMES
Call for exact times and location of runs. Typically, you can find
a group training at Paseo Park located at 67th Avenue and Greenway, Saturday
and Sunday mornings between 6:30 and 7:00AM. Runs vary from 4 to
10 miles depending on which group you run with. Pete Ramirez is usually
the person to confirm times with (469-1810).
EXCHANGES & THE LATEST
CLUB NEWS
The Mexican International Athletic Exchange Treaty is in it's final stage.
The most recent visit by the Arizona group to Mexico City had some seemingly
unforgivable snafu's. The speech Mike Sheedy was scheduled to give
at the marathon expo was inadvertantly left off the expo agenda and ALL
the invited athletes for numerous cities throughout the U.S., Russia, England,
Kenya, and Cuba were asked to vacate there rooms one night sooner than
expected. The Mexican officials were able to clear things up only
after ever everyone was already packed and waiting in the lobby trying
to figure out where they were going to sleep that last night. Things
have gone wrong with previous exchanges, in terms of certain events not
happening as planned, confusion with room reservations, etc, but this year's
room situation topped all previous incidents.
The treaty may be renewed for more years, but it will need to be under
a different set of commitments and we're not sure how many people will
be willing to go after the bad rap from this year's trip filters through
the running gossip circuit.