Adam and Tonya Engst: Keeping the Finger Lakes running 

Adam and Tonya Engst, president of the Finger Lakes Runners Club and founding member of its communications team, respectively, are pillars of the running community in Ithaca and the recipients of this month’s Hometown Hero award.

“They have endless enthusiasm,” said club member Mia Slotnick, who nominated the couple for the award.

The Finger Lakes Runners Club boasts 17 events on its 2025 calendar, including the renowned Skunk Cabbage Classic, which was held April 6. Adam oversees all of them, with the help of many loyal volunteers, while Tonya helps promote them on a communications team she created. 

Both Tonya and Adam grew up in Ithaca, and both had mothers who worked at Cornell University. They both attended Cornell, as well. In 1991, the couple moved to Seattle, returning to Ithaca 10 years later with a new appreciation for life in Tompkins County. People in Seattle would think nothing of driving an hour and a half through traffic to reach the other side of the city for dinner, Adam said; it didn’t fit their lifestyle.

“We were spending our lives in the car,” he said, adding that they had a small child at the time who did not appreciate long car rides.

After moving back to Ithaca, Adam and Tonya continued to work at the recently launched TidBITS, an online publishing company and tech blog they cofounded together. Tonya went on to work at Cornell, where she is digital content editor for the Yang-Tan Institute on Employment and Disability. Adam has written numerous technical books, including the best-selling Internet Starter Kit series.

“I took over as president [of the Finger Lakes Runners Club] in 2020 and immediately had to cancel the first race [due to COVID-19],” Adam said. The club resumed racing in 2021. 

In addition to her communications work in the Runners Club, Tonya is also the captain of the Finger Lakes Runners Club’s Women’s Cross Country Team. 

Together, the pair recognized the need for a diversity and inclusion committee for the club, and they took their time gathering information and asking the opinions of others before developing an award equity policy that favors inclusivity. 

“Whether you’re a first-time runner or seasoned pro, they don’t care, and [they] encourage everybody equally,” Slotnick said. “They just want people to show up and have a good time and want to make connections with people.”

Slotnick has been a member of the running club off and on for 30 years, she said. Her son, Alexander Simpson, followed in her footsteps in a major way, running with the club when he was a child and continuing his love of running into high school and, finally, Bucknell University, where he received a running scholarship.

“It’s pretty much been my whole life,” Simpson said. “Everything up to where I am now has been from running. I wouldn’t have gone to the college I did without running.” He recently graduated and now enjoys doing regular workouts with the club to stay in shape.

“I’ve always run their races,” Simpson said. “The classic Ithaca races I’ve been doing for so many years, since I was little.”

When Simpson went to Bucknell, he discovered that he was lucky to have grown up a runner in Ithaca.

“When you talk to other people in college Division 1, you expect they will be from a similar background with a ton of opportunities to do local races,” Simpson said, “and most of them didn’t. They ran in high school, but before that they didn’t have all these races and strong running clubs. That definitely was a huge advantage, and it was strange to me to find out that not every town has a running culture like that.”

The Engsts go the extra mile to help out other groups in very practical ways. “They support a lot of other organizations that want to put on races, like a 5K, but they don’t have timing equipment or know how to run a race. Adam can help them run races,” Simpson said.  

“The club really strives to have events that are for everybody. Not all events will be for everybody, but there is an event for somebody, regardless of age and ability or anything like that,” said Heather Cobb, executive vice president of the Finger Lakes Runners Club.

Cobb started going on group runs with the club in 2018 and joined the Finger Lakes Runners Club Board in 2020, right when COVID-19 hit and events were cancelled until 2021. She was appointed to her current position in 2023. She started a new race last year called the Parallel of Latitude, which she said was a very positive experience.

“There’s definitely a culture of bringing people’s ideas to the club and allowing them to run with it,” Cobb said. “We started a couple initiatives last year, and this year, and Adam is always like, “Great. If you want to head that up, that would be awesome; go ahead and do what feels best.’ It allows our creativity to come out and brings the community together more.” She said that Adam is so familiar with running races that the day of the Parallel of Latitude was relatively easy for her.

“Being a race director, there’s a lot that needs to happen,” Cobb said. “There’s so much work as a first-year race director, getting it off the ground, but on the day of, I was like, ‘I don’t have a whole lot to do here,’” Cobb said. “Adam had the timing down, and I could just enjoy the thing that I built, which was amazing.”

“Adam, being president, there’s so many things that he does for the club,” Cobb said. “He never asks for accolades or toots his own horn.”

Adam is, on the other hand, great at recognizing other people, said Cobb. Every month at the board meeting, he opens up the gathering with the acknowledgement of notable volunteer members. “The club is entirely volunteer run, but always people step up every month and go above and beyond, and Adam makes sure they get recognized in the minutes and in an email that goes out to board members,” Cobb said. “As a volunteer, you can burn out very easily, especially if you don’t get the appreciation back, so to know that your efforts have been seen by the president is very rewarding.”

Tonya’s contributions to the club have also been invaluable, Cobb said. Tonya took over all of the communications for the club a couple of years ago, which entailed sending emails, making posters and spreading the word on social media for 25 races. “To do that for 25 races is insane,” Cobb said. “It was a really huge effort that she was taking on and able to complete during that first year.”

After the first year as head of communications for the club, Tonya started the communications team, of which she is a member. Cobb cited this as a good example of the Engsts’ leadership and delegation skills; they trust their members to take the reins, and through thoughtful delegation they are able to spread out responsibilities throughout the club.

“As an adult, it’s hard to make friends,” Cobb said. “Everyone has their own little circle, job and family. We have kid group runs, and the volunteers really create a sense of community. I’ve made some really great friends over the years that I never would have met otherwise, and that’s one really great thing about the club — the social aspect of it.”

Tonya said she enjoys seeing people thrive as they devote more time to running.

“If they’re doing well in running, they’re doing reasonably well in the rest of their life so they can do running,” she said. “They get that monthly massage, or eat a little more sensibly, or they make their families find a way to give them four hours a week to run,” she said. “I’ve seen people make some positive, significant changes when they get into running. And that ties into mental health. I love to kind of bring people into the team and to see them do well and give them that structure. It’s so much easier to do it in a group.… I love being part of that for other people.” 

The next big race of the Finger Lakes Runners Club is the Twilight 5k, coming up June 10. For more information about the club, visit www.fingerlakesrunners.org. 

Tompkins Weekly’s Hometown Heroes Award is sponsored by Security Mutual Insurance and Canopy by Hilton Ithaca.