About Team SERG
Team SERG is a collection or runners AND friends who train together, all for the enjoyment of running itself. And the occasional 5K or Boston. The Science & Engineering Running Group was a grassroots running group at Georgia Tech who branched out into the community and formed friendships with those putoff by the structure and (lack of) community of the ATC. All of us have a degree in some branch of science or engineering (except Mark) or are working towards one. Our home is in the Atlanta area, but some members have since moved away to other areas of the US and world.

Historical Notes on Team SERG by Ben
Dated: 24 February 2008
April saw another fine showing at Boston. And then I shipped back off to France (and actually pulled off a half-marathon in Germany and France each. When I returned in the fall, Runnin' Wreck had picked up another grad student (we struggle to get undergrads to run with us, though they should have more time), Tim, who was working towards his PhD. Apparently he'd been at Tech for quite a while, but had just never bumped into us. So he joined up with SERG (as he had run at Tulane as a ugrad and still had some get-up).

Spring (2007) semester rolled around and Atlanta was to get a decent marathon (the ING Georgia) in late March. About half of SERG (the three Clarkes, Chris, and Tim) all ran, and most of us PRed. Chris and I received our BS in engineering at the end of the semester and Andrew received his master's (by thesis on something to do with paper manufacturing). During this past year, the Hardy boys (James and Kevin) sort of disappeared, but more on them later. SERG again won the team championship at Charles Harris for the 2nd straight year in February.

During the summer, the Clarke boys and Tim (and sometimes Todd and sometimes another new guy Keith, a graduate in ChemE) would head over to the track meets at Emory. Tim set a SERG PR in the 200m, finished his dissertation in late August becoming the first SERG member to receive his PhD while a member of SERG, and then headed to Alberquerque where the government is currently dissecting his brain leaving him little time to run. By the middle of the fall, we had Keith and finally a new ugrad, Jason, running with the Runnin' Wreck. Several of us did marathons across the country while Todd nursed Stamboly back to health after a couple knee ACL surgeries.

I'm guessing Todd, Jeff and Ryan joined the gang from meeting Gerber and Jim in the local area races. And then with Todd teaching at Georgia State, he brought Mark along. With that came the emergence of the running group, meeting Tuesday and Thursday nights, 6pm at the Tech track.

Through some channels, my brother Andrew, and Dave found out about the group and started running with them. Dave had graduated inbetween Jim and Gerber and had dropped the crew coxing in favor of smoking the remnants of Runnin' Wreck.

And this is where I come in and actually know the story. Andrew had told me about two running clubs on campus; the Runnin' Wreck (MW, 6pm in front of SAC at the time), and the group of guys who did track workouts on Tuesday and Thursday nights. Of course, it was a little of a struggle for me to get out to the track because I was still trying to adjust to Atlanta and all the hills. About this time Todd and the rest of us had been fooling around with a team name (or maybe they already had it figured out) and he started tracking races on a little website of his titled "Running Around...".

The team really emerged with the ATC Ekiden that September when Team SERG took top honors in Men's Open stunning ATC, Fleet Feet, and all the other pansies out there who don't train together. Over the semester I got to know all of the guys (we were up to 9 now with Ryan, Andrew, Gerber, Mark, Jim, Todd, Jeff, Dave and the addition of me). So if there'd been a team competition at the Atlanta Half Marathon that year (2002), we might've won because all nine of us ran it led by Jim. This was the time that we started pulling Chris over from Runnin' Wreck and hit double digits for the team. I think at this time, all the SERGers except for Andrew, Dave, Chris and I got singlets for the first time, and all of us got t-shirts with the motto "We be fast, we be smart, we be geeks" made by Ryan and Gerber with Todd's harebrained ideas.

The beginning of the next calendar year saw the birth of the current website. Gerber had graduated in the fall and apparently had nothing to do at his new job so he made the SERG site. And told all of how to edit it, a job which I've taken a large part in. This means that SERG is "officially" in its fourth year of existence (as of 2006).

After the spring road racing season, Jeff moved up to Virginia, though we still track his times. Plus, he's come back down a couple times to help SERG dominate. Andrew spent a SERG summer in Baton Rouge and and those of us who were still in Atlanta (Ryan, Gerber, Mark, Todd, Dave, Jim and myself) spent a weekend at Jim's wife's friend's cabin in Helena, GA. I don't remember what happened to Chris that summer.

We kept pushing each other and followed up a successful Boston (I guess it was, I didn't run it) with the track meets at Emory. Mark shipped out from Georgia State to spend some time at U. Missouri starting in August. Then came fall season, I moved off to Louisville and Andrew came back to Atlanta. Sometime that fall, Todd had to find a new friend, so he brought out Stamboly.

Then comes 2004. I return to Atlanta and we currently stand at Ryan, Andrew, myself, Gerber, Jim, Todd, Dave, Stamboly, and Chris. We added a guy name Shai for a while, but we rarely see him anymore. We think he's taken to doing workouts on his own. End of spring semester saw me move back to Louisville again and Andrew graduate. And we got news that Mark was moving yet somewhere else, this time to Oberlin College.

Apparently the summer did very good things for me because I returned to Atlanta in prime racing shape, setting new PRs in 5K, 8K (which wasn't hard as I hadn't run one in about 3 years), 10K and half marathon. Sadly though, our Ekiden place was falling as we finished 4th in Men's Open. We attribute this more to the fact that the other teams were not really teams, rather than us getting slower.

Finally I reached the end of my time in Atlanta and said goodbye to it for the 2005 year as I moved on to bigger and better places. That and it seemed like SERG was kind of dying out as four (myself in Louisville/France, Mark in Missouri, Jeff in VA, and Jim newly in SC) of us were gone from Atlanta and attendance was low at the workouts. We only had one representative at Boston (the ever-present Todd) and a 6th placing showing at a shortened Ekiden. I spent the summer running in Europe and preparing for my first marathon--not a total disaster, but not as good as I was hoping. But then the Clarke family and Chris made a good showing at Walt Disney in the beginning of 2006.

And I think the team has gotten back on track. Besides seeing the move of Mark across the drink to England the fall of 2005 saw some new life in SERG with the addition of the other brothers, James and Kevin. And then when I came back in 2006, my sister moved to Atlanta and we added our one female to the group (though we count Amy as part being married to Jim).

So as of this minute, 9:36pm, March 4th, 2006, we have in Atlanta: Ryan, Andrew, myself, Kat, Gerber, James, Kevin, Todd, Dave, Stamboly, and Chris with Gallagher apparently in England, Jeff in Virginia, and Jim in Greenville. Of course, we haven't seen much of Dave recently so we're unsure as to that. But SERG prominence has re-risen.