Tom Derderian

Since 1994, Tom Derderian has coached the GBTC men to excellence in track, cross-country, and distance running. His men’s team won the 1995 USATF New England Cross Country Grand Prix, and the men’s and women’s teams won again in 1998. Teams coached by Tom & Dave Callum have won countless USATF New England men’s and women’s indoor and outdoor track championships since 1998. He coached the GBTC women to victory in the team competition in the Boston Marathon in 2004 and the men in 2005. He coaches men and women from the mile to the marathon. Tom Derderian’s coaching philosophy is demonstrated by his keen interest in developing any athlete who wants to maximize performance toward competitive goals, going one athlete, one workout, one day at a time. Tom believes that achieving such goals is a matter of individual training, since each person is unique, but can be most effectively pursued in a regular training group over a long period of time.

"Training partners are the key,” Derderian says, “while the coach is around just to keep everyone entertained.” He is fond of saying that “the world is a conspiracy to keep you from training.” He sees the club and the association of postcollegiate athletes as an organization to fight that conspiracy. “We provide a context wherein serious athletes find one another to create a critical mass that brings an explosion in performance,” Derderian says. In November 2004 Derderian organized a wildly successful talk by esteemed New Zealand coach Arthur Lydiard in Boston. Lydiard’s distance-based training philosophy influenced GBTC’s original coach, Bill Squires, who was Derderian’s coach in the mid seventies with teammates Bill Rodgers, Bob Hodge, Pete Pfitzinger, Greg Meyer, Al Salazar, Randy Thomas, Jack Fultz, and all the others who flocked to Boston in those days when GBTC was one of the few serious postcollegiate clubs in the country. A running success both on and off the roads, Tom’s accomplishments include running in the Olympic trials in both 1972 and 1976, numerous New England road championships, a 2:19:04 Boston Marathon in 1975, and authoring the award winning book “The Boston Marathon, The First Century of the World’s Premier Running Event (Human Kinetics, Champaign, IL, 1996) and “The Boston Marathon: A Century of Blood, Sweat, and Cheers” (Triumph Press, Chicago, 2003), both available through our club store. Derderian ran at the University of Massachusetts and graduated with a degree in English Literature and Journalistic Studies. Derderian worked for Nike in the 1970s and 80s in product development and design. He earned several U.S. patents for his creative work in footwear and apparel. He has coached at Amherst (MA) High School for one cross-country season in 1977 and for four years at Salem State College. In addition to coaching the GBTC men, Tom Derderian has served as president for the USA Track and Field New England Association as well as vice president and cross-country chairman of the organization. Tom is a senior writer for New England Runner magazine. His work has appeared in Runner’s World, Running Times, Marathon and Beyond, Track and Field News, and other running publications. He is married to long-time GBTC member Cynthia Hastings. They have two daughters who have run cross-country and compete occasionally for GBTC. They live in Winthrop, MA.

Rod Hemingway

Coach Rod Hemingway joined GBTC’s coaching staff in September 2011. He continues to compete as a distance athlete and supports all aspects of the team as Assistant Distance Coach. Rod has experience coaching at the collegiate level as the men’s distance coach for track and cross country and the women’s assistant coach for track and field at Tufts University, and as the assistant cross country coach for Babson College. He was part of multiple coaching staffs that won coach of the year honors for cross country and track and field while at Tufts. Additionally, Rod has worked as the head track and field coach at The Learning Center for Deaf Children where he created, managed, and coached a new track team for deaf children in grades 5-12. As a collegiate athlete, Rod was twice a Cross Country All American, placing as high as 6th at Division III NCAA’s in 1997. Rod is an Academic All American, a NESCAC champion, a school record holder, a season MVP, and was team captain for his alma mater, Tufts University. He has been a longtime member of the club, and served it in many ways, through competition and service as a board member and volunteer.

Nick Aleles

A current MA resident hailing from NY, Coach Nick Aleles joined GBTC as an athlete in 2016 and two years later assumed the role of Sprints & Field coach. Throughout his time coaching, he has worked with sprinters, hurdlers, and jumpers in addressing their core needs and enabling them to use their strengths to continuously improve as athletes. As a player-coach, Nick applies his collegiate experience to guide & motivate his athletes in their development while prolifically continuing to compete in the GBTC red. Nick is a 2015 graduate of Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), where he competed for the Goats throughout his collegiate career; several accomplishments that were garnered include but are not limited to helping break the school's 46 yr old Men's 4x400 record during the outdoor season of 2014, which was established twice at the 2014 NEWMAC championship meet (3:19.50) with NEWMAC honors and 2014 All New England Championship meet respectively (3:19.13) , as well as the Men's DMR, which was set in the Indoor Season of 2012-13 (10:20.41) with ECAC honors. Nick also earned NEWMAC honors in the Outdoor Season of 2013 in helping the Men's 4x400 team win first place at the 2013 NEWMAC Championship meet, as well as D-III New England honors for his efforts in the Men's DMR during the Indoor season of 2015 (3rd place finish). Coach Nick is USATF Level 1 certified and also holds certifications from USTFCCCA as a Speed Specialist, Strength & Conditioning Specialist, and Combined Events Specialist. Outside of GBTC, Nick actively trains and competes as a CrossFit athlete, which has been providing him a unique perspective to the realm of powerlifting and how he trains his athletes to be more efficient in that aspect of training in the Track & Field sport.

GBTC is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit corporation. The team is governed by a board of directors elected each year by the general membership. All GBTC members are invited to attend the monthly board meetings.  The following documents explain the organization and operation of the GBTC:

• Articles of Organization (pdf)

• Bylaws (pdf) and the Bradley Award amendment

• IRS letter affirming tax-exempt status (pdf)

• GuideStar Nonprofit Report

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