Alex Noble, 26, who trains in Prospect Park for an upcoming marathon, said the non-working street lights make it difficult to spot cracks in the road during nighttime runs. View Full Caption DNAinfo New York/James Fanelli

PARK SLOPE — A team of city runners training for upcoming marathons said their hearts start racing when they jog at night in Central Park and Prospect Park because broken street lights have left paths dark and dangerous.

The Dashing Whippets, a city running group that routinely uses the two parks, said its members have spotted 15 street lights along jogging paths in Central Park that have been out since the beginning of August. In Prospect Park they have identified seven, including one non-working street lamp along the main running loop that leaves a quarter-mile stretch pitch black.

Michael Alcamo, who is on the board of the Dashing Whippets, said the group reached out to the two conservancies that manage the parks and the city more than three weeks ago about the outages. He said they also logged a 311 complaint with the city Transportation Department, which is in charge of fixing street lights, but so far nothing has been repaired.

Alcamo and others on the team said that runners feel unsafe along the sections with non-working lamps, especially in light of the murder of Howard Beach jogger Karina Vetrano and recent attacks in the two parks.

"We think that during reasonable hours, all runners and cyclists should feel safe in our city’s parks," Alcamo said.

He said his team bought 500 whistles as a safety precaution and has been handing them out to its members and other runners.

While Vetrano's murder has drawn heavy media attention, recent attacks in Central Park and Prospect Park also have runners on edge.

In early August, two teens held a jogger at knifepoint in Central Park, according to police. And in April a female jogger fought off a man with a knife who attempted to rape her in Prospect Park at about 5:15 a.m., police said.

Overall crime is down in Central Park for the year to date, according to NYPD statistics.

However, overall crime rose slightly in Prospect Park for the first six months of 2016, according to the most recently available NYPD statistics. During that period, there were two rapes, one robbery and seven grand larcenies. For the same period in 2015, there were no rapes, one felony assault, one robbery and four grand larcenies.

Tessa Benau, a Dashing Whippets member and teacher, said she runs in Prospect Park in the early morning before school, often before the sun has risen and when few people are out. She said she's constantly vigilant of her surroundings when she gets to the broken street lamp sections, especially the pitch-black quarter-mile of the park's loop that's near the zoo and carousel.

"It's just scary," she said. "It's what you're thinking about the whole run — which is not what you want to be thinking about."

Benau said she's not surprised that, despite her team's complaints, the street lights remain broken.

"I don't think a lot of things get fixed in a timely fashion in the city that matter to people," she said.

Runners said the broken street lights have come at an inopportune time — the height of the marathon-training season and the start of fall, when the sun begins to set earlier.

Matt Wong, who co-founded the Dashing Whippets in 2009, said his members mostly run after work at 7 p.m., when the sun is already going down. Their workouts can last up to two hours.

"If something happens to someone all because of a light bulb being out, it would be pretty horrible," he said.

The Prospect Park Alliance, the nonprofit that maintains the park, said it has also contacted the Transportation Department about the broken street lights and referred questions to the city agency.

The Central Park Conservancy did not respond to requests for comment.

The Transportation Department said it addresses street light outages in parks as they are reported.

"Additionally, we canvas parks monthly to address lights that may not have been sent via 311 or brought to DOT's attention, and repairs are completed as they are possible," DOT spokesman Scott Gastel said in a statement. "In some circumstances repairs require capital improvement work that can take longer."

The DOT said it works with the Central Park Conservancy to make daily repairs to its 1,800 light fixtures as needed. The agency said it also hopes to fix a severely damaged street light near the Bandshell in Prospect Park by the end of the week.

Alex Noble, a 26-year-old Dashing Whippets member who lives in Park Slope but runs in both Prospect Park and Central Park as he trains for a marathon in Detroit next month, said that for him the broken street lights are dangerous because they make it difficult to see cracks or other tripping hazards on paths.

"I'm not as concerned about being mugged as I am about falling flat on my face," he said.