Everything You Need to Know for the 2026 TCS New York City Marathon—Ortho Edition

00:00:00
Jordan Metzl: Do I hate this? Do I like this and hate this at the same time? That's all normal. And we'll talk about all those things when we think about this. But it's important to know that if it doesn't hurt a little bit, you're not doing it the right way. So it should hurt a little bit. But how do we figure out healthy versus unhealthy?
00:00:20
Rob Simmelkjaer: Hey everybody, and welcome to Set the Pace, the official podcast of New York Road Runners presented by Peloton. I'm your host, Rob Simmelkjaer, the CEO of New York Road Runners. My usual co- host, Peloton Instructor Becs Gentry is well, doing what Peloton instructors do, teaching a class right now. So it's just going to be me today, but I've got a very special guest joining us who fans of the podcast will know, Dr. Jordan Metzl from the Hospital for Special Surgery, making a return appearance to set the pace today to talk about what we know a lot of you out there are thinking about. If you are training for the TCS New York City Marathon, or maybe another fall marathon, you are thinking about staying healthy and getting to the starting line right now in these crucial weeks where some of you are getting into your real peak weeks of mileage before you start to taper. So we're going to walk you through all that. Dr. Metzl, great to have you back.
00:01:18
Jordan Metzl: Hey, thanks so much. It's a pleasure to be back and to chat with you.
00:01:21
Rob Simmelkjaer: And before we get into it, Jordan, we just had a really terrific event this past weekend in New York, the second annual HSS New York Roadrunner Symposium for runner safety, health, and performance. And it was really a great day for those who weren't able to watch it live. We had a full morning full of sessions with doctors and medical professionals and fitness professionals from a wide variety of backgrounds and specialties, really talking about how runners can get their peak performance, stay safe while running, everything from running shoes and what's safe and how to avoid injuries to even the serious topics of cardiac health and issues that we sometimes have in races with people having serious incidents of cardiac arrest. I even moderated a panel with Jenny Simpson and a couple of other great guests, so it was a really great day, Jordan. Can you talk more about that?
00:02:21
Jordan Metzl: Yeah. Well, we were so glad to do it. This is our second annual conference, and the idea is to think about health and performance and bring both of those subjects together for runners around the world. We were so glad to be joined. We had runners from almost every continent. We had over 2, 000 people join us. At one point, we had about 1, 500 people on from all over the place. And the topics were things that people would be interested in, everything from running with cancer, to running shoes, to running performance, to sleep optimization, nutrition. And we had little blocks on each of these topics.
And the nice thing is that we set it up with a short didactic talk at the top, and then a panel discussion between a runner or a coach and the scientist who was giving the lecture. And the idea was to try and bring all this information to people. And then excitingly, we're now going to be able to host this on the New York Road Runners' website so people will be able to use this as a library and watch this information as well as last year's seminar, 24 hours a day for whenever they want. So that's going to be great.
00:03:20
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah, that'll all be coming out. So keep an eye out for that on the nyrr. org website and we're hoping it'll be a resource to runners for years to come. So Dr. Metzl, thank you for organizing that.
00:03:33
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00:04:07
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Dr. Metzl, if you don't know him, is a nationally recognized sports medicine physician at Hospital for Special Surgery. He's a member, I should say, of our Medical Advisory Council here at New York Road Runners, a group that gives us great advice on runner health and safety all year long. He's also a 14- time IRONMAN finisher, and he's run 40 marathons, so he's not just talking the talk, he's walking the walk when it comes to these issues. He's the author of two books, Running Strong, The Exercise Cure, and his newest book called Push, which came out earlier this year. And Dr. Metzl also created something called Ironstrength, which is a free fitness program that brings together thousands of people into a really cool community and they do workouts in awesome places like the Intrepid and Times Square and cool spots like that.
So anyway, Dr. Metzl, great to have you back on the podcast. Let's talk about where most of our runners are right now, especially if they're training for the TCS New York City Marathon. We're at about three weeks out right now as this podcast will drop. That is, for some, maybe their peak long distance run, and then soon, by a week from now, most of them will be in a taper. What is happening with the runner's body as they hit that peak mileage and then start to turn the corner towards tapering?
00:06:07
Jordan Metzl: Well, Rob, thanks so much for that great introduction. And first of all, let me say that for all of you, and me, who are taking on this challenge of doing a marathon, including, this will be my 22nd TCS New York City Marathon, I try and do it every year, that it's a very challenging thing to do. I want to start by saying that it hurts, it hurts a little more the further on you get. It's more challenging the further on you get. And if it was easy, everybody would do it. So the fact that you're pushing yourself and you're challenging yourself, and you're coming up against the wall of, is this healthy pain, unhealthy pain? Do I like this? Do I hate this? Do I like this and hate this at the same time? That's all normal. And we'll talk about all those things when we think about this, but it's important to know that if it doesn't hurt a little bit, you're not doing it the right way. So it should hurt a little bit, but how do we figure out healthy versus unhealthy?
And this time of year, three, four weeks out before our busy fall marathon season is peak season in the sports medicine world. So if it's our offices here at HSS or some of the other people, sports medicine doctors around the country, around the world, everybody's office has runners coming in saying, " My shins hurt, my knee hurts, my hip hurts." This is definitely peak time for mileage, and also peak time for injury. And the reason that's happening is that running injuries don't typically fall into what we call acute traumatic injuries. If you're watching a football game or a soccer game, somebody twists their knee, they go down in a heap, that's what we call an acute traumatic injury. That's a one time, this guy blew out his knee or dislocated his ankle or something.
Those, thankfully, we don't see much of in road running. We see it some in trail running, but not much. We typically see what's called a repetitive use injury pattern, meaning it's not one time, but it's multiple loads over time, multiple loading patterns. So I'm running and my shins hurt a little bit, then they hurt a little more, and then all of a sudden I'm limping because my shin hurts so much. And so these repetitive use injuries build up over time. I explain this to people like a paperclip. If you take a paperclip and bend it once, it doesn't break. Twice doesn't break, but if you keep bending it, bending it, bending it, it heats up and it can start to crack or break. And that's really the scenario we see with many of the aches and pains. And so I think the key thing for runners is trying to figure out how do I distinguish healthy, this should hurt a little bit because I'm pushing myself, versus unhealthy, this is unhealthy and I'm causing a problem.
00:08:35
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah. And that is the issue, right? That's the question. And I'll, by the way, sprinkle into this conversation from time to time, the fact that Dr. Metzl, also my doctor, and I went through a lot of this. If you follow the podcast, you know my knees really started to act up late last year after the Chicago Marathon, and Dr. Metzl treated me, and we'll talk about some of that a little bit later. But let's start with that question of how should a runner distinguish that difference between, okay, yeah, I'm running a marathon, I'm training, I'm running more miles than I normally would run. Of course, I've got aches and pains, versus this is something that I need to maybe stop and get somebody to look at and consider whether this is something that it is safe for me to go run a marathon on.
00:09:23
Jordan Metzl: Yeah, that's exactly right. And I give the same advice for kids, adults, grandparents, runners, baseball players, swimmers. In my office, if pain is changing your mechanic of movement, I want you to get it checked out. So if throwing a baseball is causing elbow pain such that you can't throw it properly or running is causing Achilles tendon pain, so you can't stride properly because your Achilles tendon or your knee hurts or your hip hurts and you're moving differently, if you're moving differently, you have to get it checked out because these repetitive use injuries build up over time, but they get more serious the more you load them and don't pay attention to the symptoms you're having.
So again, some pain, which I call healthy pain is everything hurts, my quads hurt going down the steps, I feel like I'm getting out of my chair, I'm like, " Oh, damn, everything hurts." That was literally, before I jumped on the podcast, I was seeing a patient, I was getting out of the chair, I was like, " Oh my God." That's healthy, believe it or not.
But the unhealthy is I'm limping down the hall because my knee hurts so much. And as you know from your own experience, Rob, when you don't pay attention to that and try and " push" through that pain, which runners are very used to doing, we tend to create a bigger problem from a small problem because they're not doing a good job body listening. So body listening here is key.
00:10:41
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah. And some of these pains can be tricky because a lot of us, as was the case with me a year ago or so, you may have pain or discomfort. Let's say something's bugging you, but maybe it is for the first mile or two of a run, and then you start to get moving and things loosen up and they lubricate and stuff like that and the pain goes away and then you feel like you're good after that for a while, but then the pain maybe comes back after the run, in between runs. So how do you gauge that? Where is this a problem versus where is this something I can just gut my way through?
00:11:19
Jordan Metzl: Yeah, great question. So it tends to be pain that is worsening the more you go, pain that's changing your stride mechanic, pain that's waking you up at night or really sharp. You're looking for that kind of pain as something you want to get checked out because in my office, the first thing is diagnosing the problem. What's the problem they're having? They come in, they say my knee hurts. That can be a whole host of things from a meniscus tear to arthritis to a stress fracture to tendonitis. And so my job is to help figure out what is the problem you're having through, first of all, talking to the patient, examining the patient, and then getting things like X- rays and sometimes MRIs to help us diagnose the problem.
Then we have to figure out what is the injury, and how are we going to treat that? Is this an injury where people can keep training? Can they keep cross- training? Rarely do I pull somebody totally off, but sometimes I need to do that. Is this something you can safely do a marathon with? Are you going to make it a lot worse if you're trying to do a marathon? We tend to have those discussions with people. I have them all the time with people, but it's important to first get a proper diagnosis so we know what we are discussing. And then on the backside, once this injury heals, we want to figure out how do I keep that from occurring?
Is that somebody with some arthritis in their knee that we want to talk about giving some lubricant shots so their knee tolerates the loading force of running better? Is that somebody who has a stride problem, mechanical problem where we will send them to our running analysis program here or someplace to figure out is there a reason why they're running differently and/ or what can we change, their stride length, their shoes? Do they need orthotics? Do they need strengthening? There's a lot of variables we fix on the how do we prevent this from happening again? So diagnosis, treatment, prevention are all part of the same discussion, but when it comes to getting ready for the marathon, we want to make sure you're not going to screw yourself up by pushing through pain that can get a lot worse, as you know and others do too.
00:13:09
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah. Are there a lot of things, Jordan, that if someone walks into your office three weeks out from a marathon, that you can actually effectively treat and help them with in that three week period to get them ready to run the marathon safely and also reduce the long- term impact? What kinds of things can you actually address in some meaningful way in a period like three weeks?
00:13:37
Jordan Metzl: A lot of things. So things like IT band syndrome, one of the banes of runner's existence, the IT band is basically a band of tissue that runs from the outside of your hip to the outside of your knee. It has a couple of cross points. It starts as a muscle up in the hip, it crosses over the outside of the knee where sometimes it can get quite irritated, the tendon causing iliotibial band impingement or iliotibial band friction syndrome, you get a sharp pain. I classify it as somebody that feels like somebody's jabbing a screwdriver in the outside of their leg about two miles into their run. It's very specific and it hurts like hell. That's a pain where if we diagnose that, we can give a shot of cortisone on the outside of the knee and really help turn somebody's knee around quickly before a race. And I do a lot of those leading up to the marathon.
A lot of the muscle problems will sometimes use medicines like anti- inflammatory medicines or different massage techniques to get people to work on reducing those kind of pains. But again, how aggressive I can be on medicine and shots or whatever else is really contingent upon knowing what the diagnosis is. We see a bigger problem with runners doing Dr. Google, which everybody does, or now Dr. Chat. And Dr. Chat is great, but it doesn't examine you, it doesn't know your physical exam. It doesn't know your findings. It doesn't know all those things, so it's great ancillary information, but it's not your primary diagnostic tool. And so people make decisions on how they're going to do or what they're going to do or how they're going to treat themselves based on their internet searches and that can be a big problem. So it's really important to make sure you get it checked out, especially if pain is changing your movement mechanic.
00:15:10
Rob Simmelkjaer: I think that's really great for people to hear because you know there's folks out there who they're feeling something, but the last thing they want to do at this point, three weeks from a marathon is go to a doctor because they're afraid they're going to get some news they don't want to hear. They don't want to hear from their doctor, " Oh, you shouldn't run this marathon. Oh, you have a problem and don't do it." They'd rather just not go and then hear those things after. So what do you say to the runner who's actually trying to avoid hearing something like this from a doctor three weeks out from a marathon?
00:15:43
Jordan Metzl: Yeah. So I encourage runners to find health practitioners who are athletically inclined. And so here at HSS, a number, I think we probably have one of the most fit sports medicine groups in the world. A number of our folks do marathons or run or do HYROX or do all kinds of stuff that basically is very active. It doesn't mean that your doctor has to be running the marathon, but it does mean that your doctor or your physical therapist or your nutritionist or whomever is somebody that understands the importance of exercise and is actively, I think an exerciser. I think that gives you a much more realistic assessment of what this means versus going to see somebody that thinks runners are crazy, which some doctors... When I first started here at HSS, people would put up in our orthopedic conference like this person is a whatever thing and they're a runner. And that was code name for there's something wrong with them because there's something wrong with them. They're nuts.
And nothing could be further. Runners are healthier, they live longer, they have better indices of less depression, they have better attitude. Obviously, go to the finish of any one of our races and you see smiling people who have done a great thing. So I just think that you need somebody who is athletically sympathetic, though not necessarily particularly a marathoner, though I think that helps people understand what you're going through and how important it is.
00:17:06
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah, that's actually a great point. Just the mentality of the provider, the healthcare provider can definitely make a difference in at least getting the runner to understand the advice and be able to relate to it. So that's really a great point, Dr. Metzl. Let's talk a little bit about, you mentioned cortisone shots, and there's a lot of, I guess myth around the idea of getting a cortisone shot or maybe even a gel injection soon before a race. There are those who definitely think it's a good thing to do and something worth considering, and then there are those who think it's potentially a bad idea because maybe it's masking an injury that you should really be feeling to know when it's time to stop running. What is the wisdom on getting things like that, in some cases, maybe even just days before a race?
00:17:57
Jordan Metzl: Great question. So I'm going to give you a patient I saw last week as a perfect example. We'll call this person patient Jane Doe, and she came in with a lot of pain on the inside part of her knee and she came in and said, " Hey, listen, I'm training for a fall marathon and I'm having a lot of trouble running and now I'm limping a bit because my knee hurts so much." And Jane Doe had pain on the inside part of her knee where there is something called the pes anserine bursa. The pes anserine bursa or duck foot bursa for all the Latin scholars out there is the area where three of the tendons from the leg hook into the inside part of the tibia bone and there's a little fluid filled sac called the bursa, which can get very irritated. But her pain was really sharp, and when I pushed on that area of her leg, she had a lot of wincing type pain.
And even though her X- rays were fine, and I knew she was sore right on the pes bursa, she had so much discomfort that I was worried she may be getting a stress fracture underneath that bursa. And at that part of the tibia bone, a stress fracture sometimes can look like pes bursitis, but it's not, it's a stress fracture. And so I said, " Listen, I want you to be able to do your fall marathon and I want to give you a shot of cortisone in this pes bursa because that will help get rid of your pain in a short period of time." Injections into things like the IT band or the pes bursa, which sit outside of the joint, are very helpful in reducing pain without much downside at all.
But I sent her for an MRI first, and the reason I did is because a stress fracture doesn't often show up on an X- ray. It will show up on an MRI. And the key thing with treating is you have to know what you are treating. If you don't have a proper diagnosis, you can end up making a problem worse, even though well- intentioned by loading somebody up with anti- inflammatory medication or giving a shot or things that can reduce the symptoms, but not effectively understand what you're taking care of. So in her case, I sent her for an MRI.
In fact, she came back with a big stress fracture developing right underneath the pes bursa. So she had a tibial stress fracture in the same area just underneath the pes bursa. And if I'd given her a shot of cortisone, which she really wanted, I would've done her a huge disservice because she probably would've had less pain for a day or two. She would've gone out and run more, and that entry would've gotten a lot worse. No chance. I had to pull her out of her fall marathon.
But the key thing for her then is why did this injury happen? Does she have low bone density? We're getting a bone density workup on her now. She's somebody that for a long time didn't do a lot of dairy and had some calcium deficiency and vitamin D deficiency in her diet. She struggled with disordered eating as a teenager and went through a whole period of time when she didn't get her period for months in a row, which can lead to low bone mass. And so a lot of these things tend to interrelate, but the key thing for her was trying to figure out the proper diagnosis. And so sometimes people can do these types of things to ameliorate pain, but the key thing is to recognize that you want to figure out the diagnosis before you treat. And that's where sometimes we get a problem is that people want to jump right to the treatment without understanding what they are treating, and that's where we can run into problems.
00:20:56
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah, no, it makes perfect sense. Absolutely. And the MRI is a powerful thing, so a lot of the time that's what's needed to figure it out. Thank you for that great example. All right, so let's-
00:21:06
Jordan Metzl: I'm going to give you a quick flip side on that real quickly just because I think people will find this interesting, at least I do, is that runner's MRIs and all of MRIs shows the natural aging process. And I saw somebody in my office the other day who was training for actually our marathon and had some ankle pain, not much. And his MRI showed some swelling in the end part of his tibia bone just above his ankle, but he had no pain there. And so in runners, there was a big study done at University of Minnesota where they did MRIs of people who'd run the marathon who had no shin pain, and about 65%, 70% of the runners were shown to have a stress fracture on their MRI with no symptoms. Did they have a stress fracture? No, they had no symptoms, but their MRI was so sensitive that it showed swelling in the bone that would've been considered a stress fracture if it correlated to clinical symptoms.
So the key point here is that it's a combination of the patient exam, the history, their pain, and the MRI all coming together because if you get an MRI of any of us, we all have meniscus tears. We all have some cartilage loss. We all have some swelling in our bone if we're training for a marathon. So the key thing is correlating the symptoms you're having to the MRI, that's how we get the right diagnosis. So that's why MRIs can be both good and bad, and that's why I'm always a little cautious about people wanting to go right to the MRI because it's going to show a bunch of stuff that probably has no significance, or may not, depending on the context.
00:22:28
Rob Simmelkjaer: I love it. That's a great little mini- education there, way better than Dr. Google, so thank you for that. Enjoyed learning about that right there. All right, so let's go to some of the most common injuries, Dr. Metzl. Let's start with the knee, which I think is the one that probably brings more runners to you than anything else, and it's what brought me into your office. We have a phrase we use called runner's knee, which is commonly known. And I experienced what I think I'd call runner's knee, that pain under the kneecap, which maybe it's hurting during a run. In my case, it was mostly after and between runs that it was hurting. But what is it, Dr. Metzl? What is going on under the kneecap when people are experiencing that?
00:23:10
Jordan Metzl: Gotcha. So the knee is one that we tend to see running injuries tend to be waist down, including hips, knees, shins, and feet. Knees are certainly one of the most common. And around the knee, we see two really common things, what we call runner's knee and iliotibial band syndrome on the outside of the knee. Runner's knee is basically what we call a waste- basket term in medicine, meaning it just applies to a general set of symptoms of my knee hurts when I run and afterwards.
And it's important to differentiate runner's knee, which is an irritation of the cartilage underneath the kneecap. The kneecap is what we call a sesamoid bone, meaning it sits inside a muscle tendon unit, in this case, the quad. So all the quad muscles hook into the quad tendon, which hooks into the kneecap, the patella, which then hooks into the patellar tendon, which then hooks into your knee, into your tibia bone. And so runner's knee is an irritation underneath that kneecap, but it can be everything from irritation of the cartilage to wearing down of the cartilage called some arthritis, all of which can present as runner's knee.
And so the key thing is figuring out, is this somebody with healthy cartilage, some wearing cartilage? And the key thing with runner's knee is number one, making the right diagnosis. Number two, trying to reduce pain. And the reasons classic runner's knee happens is the kneecap tends to get caught between the quad muscles and hip muscles above and the foot below. We know that runner's knee is associated with a foot that pronates or drops in, so looking at somebody's feet is one of the first things we do and all our sports medicine practitioners do. We have them take off their shoes and socks and look at their lovely runner's toes and we see are their arches dropping in quite a lot called pronating.
Now, many people listening are pronators and have no pain in their shins or their knees, and we call them happy pronators. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. But if you're getting runner's knee, it may be that we need to correct your arches with some arch supports, or shoes that have a bit more control from your ankles to keep how your, what happens with runner's knee is the foot drops in or pronates loading more pressure on the inside part of the kneecap up the kinetic chain of the body, and that can be a problem.
And then upstream, we've made a big push over years to get runners deeply invested in strength training, strong muscles. When you land, your quads and your glutes keep you essentially in a neutral position from one leg to the next. But if you're too weak, your hip and your knees tend to drop into the middle, and that creates a lot of loading force around the kneecap called creating runner's knees. So we want to figure out why somebody's getting runner's knee, and then we want to treat the symptoms of runner's knee. And that's one of the cases where I'll sometimes use some anti- inflammatory medicine to get rid of that irritation, keeping people fit, getting them on the bike, getting them cross- training and getting them ready for the race.
I will generally not pull somebody out of a marathon for runner's knee because I usually control the symptoms. And then maybe after their race, we'll really address why that's happening. Is that happening because of their feet? Is it happening because of their muscles? Is it happening because of their stride mechanics? That's one of the situations we'll use our run analysis to try and figure out what can we fix with them so for their next marathon, we can get them dialed in so they don't have that problem.
00:26:18
Rob Simmelkjaer: And you mentioned the strength training element of it, and that's what I've been doing a lot of since I first came into your office with physical therapists, things like that can really feel the difference that it has made for me. Is there a role for that even in the last few weeks before a marathon, especially during that taper period when you're doing less mileage, should you be keeping up, especially if you have knee issues with that strength training pretty much over the last couple of weeks?
00:26:48
Jordan Metzl: Definitely. I do it all the way up through maybe a few days before, but I reduce what I'm doing. It's not as aggressive. Running is what we call a plyometric, basically a rapid muscle elongation contraction. You heard that in our seminar on the weekend. So a plyometric is like a jump squat or a burpee where you're leaving the ground and running is essentially a 26. 2 marathon of plyometrics, one leg to the next. You're never totally both feet on the ground except the start at the end of the race. And so training plyometrics, I'm a huge believer in plyometric training, plyometric lunges, plyometric jump squats, all those types of activities can really prepare you and prepare your body to do a marathon. I will not be as aggressive with my plyometrics leading up to maybe a week before, but I do keep my strength training going all the way through the last week or so.
Tapering, aside from being psychologically I feel like I should be doing more, it's a painful process and everything hurts. The last week before the marathon, everything hurts. And so taking time to getting some massage, hydration, all these things that make a difference, I think for making you feel a little better are important leading up to the race.
00:28:00
Rob Simmelkjaer: Let's talk about arthritis for a second, Dr. Metzl. You mentioned it's one of the common causes of the runner's knee, and that's a word that people have feelings about, right? If you are told you have arthritis, you don't want to go around a lot of people saying that because arthritis sounds like something that old people get, right? And maybe you're in your 40s or 50s, you're not ready to start thinking of yourself that way, right? What do you tell people about what arthritis is, and then to what degree can that be treated? Because essentially what I've learned from you is it's a loss of cartilage, right? Cartilage does not regrow. So if it's gone, it's gone. And that feels kind of hopeless when you hear that. Why is it not hopeless for someone who's been given a diagnosis of arthritis?
00:28:53
Jordan Metzl: Yeah. I mean, it's one of the most common problems we see, and all of us, 45 year old plus, will start to get some degree of arthritis, arthro jointitis inflammation. Arthritis is an inflammation of the joint, and there are several major buckets of it. The smaller bucket are the inflammatory arthritides. So things like lupus or rheumatoid arthritis or people with inflammatory bowel disease or Lyme disease, those can cause inflammatory arthritis. That's a small subset.
The much bigger subset are the wear and tear arthritis or osteoarthritis, which are common either, A, genetically your parents had arthritis, you're more likely to get arthritis, or B, post- traumatic. People that tear their ACL, whether or not they get surgery, have about an 80%, 85% risk of getting arthritis 15 years after that injury. So we see a lot of teenagers that tear their ACL by the time they're 40 have arthritic knees. And so it used to be that that arthritis was though to be all right, you have an arthritic knee or hip, you better back way off your activity.
Increasingly what we know is that if you can reduce the symptoms in the joint with things like we do different types of either anti- inflammatory medication or gel injections, or some of the newer stuff, PRP, where we take your blood and spin it and take your platelets or mix that with some of the gels. There's some work being done on stem cells. I don't think we're there yet, but that may be something interesting in the future to reduce the symptoms of arthritis. And then simultaneously, the key piece is stronger muscles. We know that arthritic body parts feel better with strength. So if you're 50 plus and you've had an MRI or X- rays of your knee and you've had some sports injuries, guess what? You have arthritis. Whether you know it or not, your picture, as I was mentioning, the MRI is very sensitive. It will show some of that.
But the key thing for you is how do I reduce those symptoms? How do I turn myself into a badass? How do I make my muscles as strong as possible so those symptoms don't hold me down? In fact, I can do more. And so one of the reasons I like to do an IRONMAN or marathon every year is to basically keep my body as bulletproof as possible. I've torn both of my ACLs and I have arthritis in both of my knees, and yet I do at least one marathon a year, and I try and do an IRONMAN every couple of years. And I do that to keep myself motivated and to keep myself strong. Definitely one thing that's true is the further you are from 15 years old, the easier it is to lose your fitness and the harder it is to get it back, so it's much easier to keep giving yourself goals. One thing I complain about all the time is I have to work five times as hard to go half as fast as, I mean, I literally, it was so easy, and I didn't even appreciate how easy it was.
00:31:34
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah. I'm with you, 100%. But there's still value in it, right? So if you've got to change your goals, and that's part of what your book pushes about, is you may have to change the goals, but there's still this fundamental value in doing the thing, and pushing yourself maybe harder than you did when you were 25 to run slower.
00:31:57
Jordan Metzl: 100%. But that whole experience of pushing yourself to a place of being uncomfortable, what I talk about in push and in all my, when I talk is I want people to become comfortable being uncomfortable. That push is a mindset of pushing your mind to a place that doesn't necessarily want to go, pushing your physiology. We know that when you stress your body, among other things, you make and preserve your mitochondrial function longer into life, pushing your physiology. We know that exercise exertion produces your respiratory physiology and basically helps you be active and give you more energy later in life, keeps maintaining your muscle later in life. All these things have tremendous downstream effects.
So learning to push yourself, and that's why doing events like a marathon are really valuable, I think, because it pushes you to a place where just, let's be honest, it's easier not to do the marathon or to do the marathon. Especially over time, it's easier to sit on your couch or stay in bed Saturday morning than get up and do your long training run. But making yourself do that really helps in so many ways, mind and body, that I think the value is just incalculable for people across their lifespan.
00:33:11
Rob Simmelkjaer: Oh man, you're making me think about giving it another shot. I took the year off for marathons, as you know, Dr. Metzl, partly due to our conversations, it seemed like it was a good idea. But getting back after it, having that goal really does mean something.
00:33:28
Jordan Metzl: And I'd say for you, the benefit of you is that you came into your wonderful job and doing an amazing job and you said, " All right, I'm the CEO of New York Road Runners. I better get out there and start doing the stuff." And so you loaded on several marathons in a relatively short period of time. Your poor knee-
00:33:50
Rob Simmelkjaer: Three in two years to be exact. Yes.
00:33:50
Jordan Metzl: Your poor knee is like, " Dude, what are you doing to me here?"
00:33:55
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yes.
00:33:55
Jordan Metzl: And you violated the classic rule of toos, too much, too fast. And I think the benefit of you now is that you're a much smarter customer. You're like, " Hey, listen, I know this pain. I know I can control my symptoms, some strengthening. I know how much my body can do. I know what my body can't do."
I think before, you were just saying, " All right, I'm here. I got to do this. I got to get through. I got to do this race. I got to do this race. I'm running with our board chair. She's a former professional runner. I got to keep up with her." And instead of listening to you, you were taking in all these external factors, and I think you're going to be a much smarter version of you going forward. So that's why I'm fully confident you're going to be back out doing more of these.
00:34:34
Rob Simmelkjaer: I love it, I love it. You talked earlier about shins, and so we talked a little bit about the stress fracture versus a shin splint. I want to talk about Achilles for a second because that's having a little moment in running because of what we just saw in Berlin not long ago, right? I'm sure you saw the video, Jordan, of Tigst Assefa, the woman who won the women's division at the Berlin Marathon was on pace to set a world record, but at some point in the last mile or two, her Achilles was partially torn, still managed to get across with a course record winning the race, but obviously you could really see how much pain she was in. I just want to stop and ask you, how crazy is that, that she was able to even finish the race and set a course record running not an insignificant amount of the race at the end there on a partially torn Achilles, which is super painful?
00:35:33
Jordan Metzl: Yeah, no, definitely. So as you know, the myth of Achilles, probably not true, but so the baby Achilles was dipped into the River Styx, held by his Achilles tendons and make him impenetrable. But there was one vulnerable area of his body, which was his Achilles tendon. And that myth basically lives on because the Ancient Greeks saw people with these Achilles problems and they hurt like hell. God, we better make up a good story to make this make some sense, and that hence we have the legend of the myth of Achilles. And so Achilles tendon problems are very common, they hurt.
And increasingly, I think one of the interesting things is some of the new super shoes that tend to tilt people forward and give more propulsion can be helpful if you are used to doing them. But if you're somebody that says, " Hey, listen, I'm going to go to the expo. I'm going to get myself a brand new pair of these super shoes and I'm going to go springing up First Avenue." What does that do? Puts a lot more load on what we call your posterior chains. So Achilles, hamstring, particularly much more load. And you end up running faster than your soft tissue is used to you running and more springy than your soft tissue is used to seeing. And those loading forces over time can basically cause that paperclip to bend, bend, bend, bend, snap.
And so that's why I caution people, professional runners all the way down to recreational folks, that if you're going to do those type of super shoe type thing, which people like or don't like depending, you have to get your body used to doing those because it does put much more load on the posterior chain. But Achilles tendon problems, we really break up into tendonitis, irritation, tendinosis, a chronic irritation with a bump on the Achilles, or then a partial tear, which is very, very painful.
These tend to be part of the same continuum. And my guess is that people with a partial tear ended up having some tendinosis or very painful Achilles symptoms before and just kept trying to push through. We had a guy who got a fracture in his femur coming down the backside of the Verrazzano Bridge one year because he'd had a lot of hip pain, had a stress fracture in his femur that he didn't know about, and he came crashing down and cracked the head of his femur bone and had to be transported off the course, again, not listening to his body.
So the key thing is, if you're a professional runner and you're whatever, obviously she knew what she was doing and she won the race incredibly, but I think there's a lot of points there about how you have to be a good body listener. And if you're average person that has to go to work on Monday or maybe Tuesday, if you're taking the day off after the marathon, it's important to remember that there's healthy pain and unhealthy pain, and you don't want to put yourself in a position where you're ending up in really unhealthy pain situations.
00:38:15
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah, that's a wild story. I had not heard that one before. And it actually raises a good question, which is the mid- race diagnosis. Okay, so you're out there, you're running the marathon, okay? Something comes up. How as a runner, you're not obviously going to have your doctor to diagnose you, there's not going to be an MRI. You've got to make kind of a self- diagnosis in your mind in that moment about how to deal with it. The one that's happened to me the most over the years actually has been the hamstring. I have tight hamstrings, and I've gotten that hamstring talking to me as I call it, sometimes in the first four or five miles of a marathon, which is not a great thing to have happen. It starts to really get in your mind, and you question whether you can make it. And I've found ways to get through those, but what is the way for a runner to make that mini- diagnosis of themselves, and should they be adjusting anything about what they're doing due to a pain that they're feeling in the middle of a race?
00:39:21
Jordan Metzl: Yeah. So I think my first comment of this is one of the great things you can do is you look at the wonderful stream of race photos you get from when you start out in the marathon, in our marathon, and you start over the bridge and you're blowing kisses and you look so happy and you're all fresh and everybody's smiling. And then you get to a little further down in Brooklyn, you still look pretty good.
And then you get to that halfway coming over the Pulaski Bridge and you're kind of like, " Oh, man." But you're kind of smiling. It's kind of fake, it's kind of real. Then you get to those photos coming up the 59th Street Bridge, and you literally look like you're starting to eat a sandwich made of some material. You come down the backside, you go up 1st Avenue, you're like, "Oh, I feel better."
And then you get up into the Bronx and you're like, " Oh my God." You come over to that little teeny bridge coming into 5th Avenue and then you come up that 5th Avenue, and literally, those photos, it looks like the Bataan Death March. You look awful. And it's just like that progression of photos is everybody. Everybody has that.
And you look at the beginning versus the middle versus the end. So all of us get these aches and pains, and the key thing is figuring out what are the strategies. So for example, like hamstrings, is this a very sharp hamstring pain? Is this just some generalized achiness? Can I try and shorten my stride during the race? Which is what a lot of us do. My hamstring's sore, I may be pushing a little too hard. I want to try and shorten my stride a little bit. Maybe I'll pull off into one of our first aid tents and get some Biofreeze or stuff rubbed on my hamstring. I distinguish soft tissue pain, which I think it's fine to try and push through somewhat versus bone pain. I'm limping, and I look like I'm in the Red Badge of Courage. That is not what we want.
But if you can do it and you can get some stuff rubbed on you and you can pull off, we have medical stops very frequently along the course. Hop in, talk to some people, see what they think. We have massage at a number of these medical stations, that can be helpful for people. So I think it's normal to generally try and keep moving. You may have to change your pace a bit, you may have to adjust your expectations. We see problems and people try and push through much harder than their body wants them to do at that particular time.
But generally, I think some of those aches and pains, most of them are probably fine during the race. We see the vast majority of marathon injuries leading up to the race. If you get to the start line, as you know, most people end up finishing. Although as you know, because you texted me a couple years ago, " Oh my God, Jordan, I saw you running and you pulled off at mile 16."
Even if you've done 40 plus marathons, I was chasing my damn brother who's skinnier and faster, and I couldn't catch the son of a gun, and I was trying to go down, run too fast down the 59th Street Bridge and my hamstring freaking went poof at mile 16. I'm like, " All right, done." I hopped over and I knew I was done. No chance. DNF, that was it. And so even if you've done it for a long time, you do dumb stuff. I do dumb stuff all the time. And so the key thing is trying to just be mindful of healthy versus unhealthy pain and what are the things I can do.
00:42:24
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah. So what do you think is a piece of advice you can give runners over the next few weeks that will make the biggest impact? Obviously, folks are out there dealing with all kinds of different things and they're deciding about their mileage and treatment, and should they take an ibuprofen if they're feeling a thing, or foam rolling. All the things are in their head right now, especially if they're new to marathon running. What are a few tips that you think will help the most people over the next few weeks?
00:42:49
Jordan Metzl: Number one, get to the start. You've made it this far. You can see the start line, which is essentially seeing the finish line. And the key for you is get to the start. So if you feel totally wiped and you feel like you're not having anything productive happening and you're running, back off. If you feel like something is niggling and changing how you move, back off. The key for you is to get to the start. If you miss a run, a long training run, whatever, it doesn't matter. The key thing is getting to the start.
It was interesting in our seminar, by the way, a bunch of the work that Dr. Daniel Lieberman, the evolutionary biologist at Harvard was talking about it was about the resting that a number of the Kenyan runners do around their running sessions and studying them and that they rest a lot. And so make sure you're kind of resting and getting to the start. Soft tissue work, gentle massage, foam rolling, some of that kind of stuff is very, very valuable. Ibuprofen, no problem. If you need a little bit here and there, I do. But thinking about that versus masking something which is acutely sore, big difference.
And then just being, it's normal to be anxious, it's normal to be a little bit scared. It's a big deal. And again, as I said at the top, if it was easy, everybody would do it, but they don't because it's very challenging. And as you go around our wonderful city, and you see people in every borough there just pouring their hearts out for you, they recognize that you're a fricking hero just for getting your butt out there and doing this because it's damn hard. It's much easier not to do it.
And the fact that you're out there doing it is so inspiring to everybody around you that when you're in a group of runners, yeah, that's what we do. But when people in the outside world who are, we're the minority of the world and look at us, just being out there pushing that limit is just part of the human connection that people really want to be part of that. They want to be part of your journey. They want you to take your AirPods out of your ears or at least one, and connect with them on the road and say, " Hey, listen, you're pushing. I'm here to help push you. I want to yell your name wherever you're from. I want to help get you to the next mile."
So give them that chance to interact with people. Put your name on your shirt, be part of the experience, make sure you're drinking in the beauty of what this event is because it's challenging, but just getting to the starting line is key.
00:45:12
Rob Simmelkjaer: 100%, Dr. Metzl, that is why the last couple years at my starting line speech in Staten Island, I always say congratulations. And I always say, " Why am I congratulating you? The race hasn't started yet, because you got here." And it is really, really hard to get to the starting line of the TCS New York City Marathon in many ways.
00:45:37
Jordan Metzl: 100%.
00:45:38
Rob Simmelkjaer: All right. Dr. Jordan Metzl, always a pleasure to have you on and help you get all of our runners out there to the starting line. Again, Dr. Metzl's with Hospital for Specialist Surgery. He's a new board member of New York Road Runners as well. His latest book, Push, is available on Amazon. It'll help you get a little more psyched up and a little less scared if you're in that last few weeks, so I recommend it as a read if you're looking for something to get you ready for the marathon. Thank you so much, Jordan.
00:46:09
Jordan Metzl: Wonderful to see you. Thanks.
00:46:10
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00:46:35
Rob Simmelkjaer: This week, we announced the 2026 Team Inspire for the TCS New York City Marathon. Team Inspire is 26 of the most inspirational stories of runners who are running the marathon this year. And we always have a lot of great stories. So these 26 are truly incredible in terms of what they've done and overcome to run the marathon this year. Joining me to talk about this year's Team Inspire is Carole Harsch, our Director of Public Relations, making her debut appearance on Set the Pace. Welcome.
00:47:06
Carole Harsch: Thank you, Rob. Happy to be here. Yes, you said it's my debut, first time guest, but longtime listener of Set the Pace, and can't wait to talk all things Team Inspire.
00:47:14
Rob Simmelkjaer: Hard to believe it's your first time on the pod. We've wanted you on for a long time, so it's about time. Great to have you on. Let's first talk about Team Inspire for those who don't know what it is and how it even comes to be. What's the process of how we choose these 26 stories from literally thousands of incredible people running the marathon?
00:47:36
Carole Harsch: Yes. So Team Inspire, it officially started in 2022. And so every year there's 60,000 runners that tow the starting line on the TCS New York City Marathon. So those are 60,000 individual stories, 60, 000 individual reasons for running. So the PR team pulls together Team Inspire. There are 26 runner stories on Team Inspire. Each one of them represents one mile of the 26. 2 mile race. And to stick with the 26 theme, we also announced Team Inspire today because it's 26 days until the TCS New York City Marathon. So we send out a story survey every single summer to all registered runners in the marathon fields, and we also source stories from charity partners, sponsors, internal staff, really anyone can nominate someone who has a compelling story.
And then our team goes through the thousand stories that we get in response. We vet them, we call them to learn more, and then we put together Team Inspire. So these really are the cream of the crop. They are the most compelling stories. They'll make you laugh, they'll make you cry, and it's the greatest honor of my time here at New York Road Runners to be able to help lead this program.
00:48:49
Rob Simmelkjaer: Let's jump into some of these stories, and I want to start with Mildred Baker, who at 80 years old is running her first marathon on November 1st. This is an unbelievable story. Carole, how did we first get to know Mildred?
00:49:04
Carole Harsch: Well, first I just want to say I want to be like Mildred when I grow up. I would love for her to be my adopted grandmother. She is so cool, so kind. Mildred is an interesting one. She found running in her late 70s through our Striders program, and that is our free program for older adults. So she started running with Strider. She had never really run before, and she was so inspired that she ran her first ever half- marathon in 2025. So we found out about this at the United Airlines NYC Half back in March 2025. And from there she said, " I could do this again. I want to do double the distance. I want to do the full marathon." So now at age 80, Mildred is running her first ever marathon, so I mean, she really personifies it's never too late to try something new, and she's incredible. I can't wait to greet her at the finish line.
00:49:56
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah. Her finish at the United Airlines NYC Half in 2025 was one of the best videos that we've ever had here at New York Road Runners. Her disbelief that she had done it, she couldn't believe she had finished a half- marathon. It was so beautiful. I cannot wait to see Mildred's reaction when, not if, when she crosses the TCS New York City Marathon finish line in Central Park.
Next, I want to get to a trio of moms who are running together as one story, Sheena Lawrick, Sherie Buell, and Laura Lang. Three moms. How did these moms meet, and why are they running together?
00:50:37
Carole Harsch: Yeah, so a pretty unique story. I mean, I think it's one of those things where unfortunate circumstances can lead to something great. So all three of these incredible women, their young children were diagnosed with the same form of pediatric cancer. And because of that, they all ended up at Memorial Sloan Kettering Center in New York City. They met in the waiting room, and from there, bonded over treatments for their kids, long hours, late nights in the hospital, and what they found solace in was going for runs together. They could lean on each other and use running as a way of healing.
And what's very cool about Sheena, Sherry, and Laura is that all three of their kids, Gus, Noah, and Holly are in remission. They are cancer- free. So now the moms are taking on the TCS New York City Marathon, and they're running with Fred's Team, which is Memorial Sloan Kettering's charity fundraising team, so they are now raising money for pediatric cancer treatment like their kids received. So again, just horrible circumstances that brought these three women together, but the fact that their kids are cancer- free, and their kids will be in New York to cheer them on is unbelievable.
00:51:46
Rob Simmelkjaer: And so great that they're running to raise money for this incredibly important cause. And of course, that's a huge part of this year's marathon as we look to raise $ 100 million for charities through the TCS New York City Marathon in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the five- borough course. So of course, a lot of these Team Inspire runners are running for different causes.
And speaking of that anniversary, Carole, there's only one runner who has run every single marathon since that first five- borough marathon in 1976, and he is running again this year as a member of Team Inspire.
00:52:25
Carole Harsch: Dave Obelkevich, he is a legend like no other. Yeah, this man, he's the only person that has run every single New York City Marathon since 1976. He also previously ran the marathon when it was only in Central Park, so he has really seen the evolution of the New York City Marathon and has a perspective that no other person could have. I think what's most insane about Dave is he has continued to run the marathon despite certain health challenges. He had broken ribs one year and still ran. He had an aneurysm in his leg in 2020 and still decided to do the virtual marathon.
I was talking to Dave and I asked, " Do you ever consider not running? The first Sunday in November, are you just ever like, 'I can't do it anymore'?"
And he said, " Do you ever think about, are you going to eat breakfast in the morning? No, you just do it."
So for him, the first Sunday in November, it's etched into his calendar and he will do it for as long as he possibly can. And he's now running with his daughter who is serving as his guide, and he met his wife through running. So one of those stories that really just transcends generations, and we're very excited to have Dave on Team Inspire this year.
00:53:39
Rob Simmelkjaer: We have a runner this year, Carole, whose story is inspiring, but it really begins with so much tragedy. When you think about what women in Afghanistan have gone through over the last several years since the Taliban took over in Afghanistan, so many girls and women have really struggled. They've been denied the opportunity to go to school and live normal lives. Well, there's a woman running in this year's marathon who was able to escape those circumstances, and the New York City Marathon was part of what inspired her to get to the point of freedom that she has, and now she's going to be running it.
00:54:19
Carole Harsch: Yes. So you're talking about Danish, and I've talked to hundreds of runners over my five years here at New York Road Runners, and they're all unique and stick out for different reasons, but she in particular just is truly phenomenal. She grew up in Afghanistan, and when the Taliban returned to power, she always dreamed of how can she get out of the situation? There must be another way. And how she fantasized about freedom was watching videos of the TCS New York City Marathon on social media. And to her, that race represented freedom and independence and agency and the ability to just move further in life. So she ended up leaving Afghanistan and turned to running because she lost her home. She felt like she lost her identity and she made it. She's now a student at Cornell University, and she's running the TCS New York City Marathon.
And I think what's very cool about her story is that she actually is the author of a children's book that is also coming out this fall, and it features an Afghan woman who dreams about running the TCS New York City Marathon. So it's largely an autobiographical children's novel all about her story. So just a plug for her to purchase her book and see how her journey unfolds on race day.
00:55:39
Rob Simmelkjaer: Let's talk about another member, Jeffrey Abramowitz from Philadelphia. He was a lawyer, a trial lawyer who actually ended up going to prison tragically. And upon his release, he lived in shelters, saw the barriers preventing people from successfully reentering society after serving a term in prison, and he's gone on to try to do something about that.
00:56:05
Carole Harsch: Yeah. Jeffrey, I think is a great example of resilience and just overcoming the odds and overcoming hardships to better your life and better other lives. So I think what makes Team Inspire very special is just that it really tells the story, all stories, all walks of life. We literally have every single background, age, gender, race, ethnicity, pace, ability represented in Team Inspire. And he represents a really unique group, which is the incarcerated population and formerly incarcerated population. And when he was released from prison, that could have gone any number of ways, but he decided to take what he learned from his sentence and time in jail to then give back to that community.
And he has now worked his way up to be the CEO of The Petey Greene Program. And that is a nonprofit that helps formerly incarcerated folks find a path forward, helps them with jobs, help them with educational programs. And The Petey Greene Program is currently working with Rikers Island, so of course we know them from New York City. So Jeffrey, he is now raising money for The Petey Greene Program as part of our $ 100 million charity goal.
00:57:14
Rob Simmelkjaer: Carole, we this past summer held the first ever 9/ 11 Memorial Race that we had had a part of at New York Road Runners. It was a race that happened downtown every year, and we got involved, brought it to Central Park this year with the 9/ 11 Memorial and Museum. Of course, we commemorated the 25th anniversary of 9/ 11 this year. And at that race, I met an incredible young woman named Hanna Born from Alexandria, Virginia, and she is a part of Team Inspire this year as well. She was only three years old on 9/ 11/2001, and she was in the daycare at the Pentagon that day. Tell a little bit about her story and what she's now doing to commemorate the victims of September 11th, 2001.
00:58:02
Carole Harsch: Yeah. So Hanna, you just mentioned she was only three years old during 9/ 11, but that is one of her, if not the earliest memory that she has, and it truly shaped her entire life. She now is a pilot in the Air Force, so she was so inspired after surviving 9/ 11 and just seeing what other families of her friends went through that she now is in the Air Force and she has her own personal project called Run to Remember 2, 977. So she is running one mile for each of those nearly 3, 000 folks who died of 9/ 11, and she is hoping to achieve that goal by the end of this year, so we are adding 26. 2 miles to that Run to Remember project for Hanna.
And we also have another 9/ 11 story. At the 25th anniversary of 9/ 11, we felt it was important to highlight stories of folks who really were impacted. So we have another gentleman named Dennis. He is from Salem, Massachusetts, and he was deployed on 9/ 11 to come down to the World Trade Center from Massachusetts, and he unfortunately lost 13 of his squad members. He was a firefighter. And to honor them on every single training run, he carries a card with each of their faces and their names, and their memories are really what inspires him to continue on. He talks at length about how he's on long runs and thinks he can't push through, and then he looks at those cards and thinks, " This is for my squad members." And he's running with Tunnel to Towers Foundation, and they have a personal goal of raising $ 1 million for families and victims of 9/ 11.
00:59:47
Rob Simmelkjaer: Really good. Really important this year to have that as a group that we are recognizing with the marathon. With the 50th anniversary of the five borough, Carole, it's only appropriate that we have at least one member in Team Inspire from every single borough in New York City. So we've got everyone represented. We talked about Mildred, she's from the Bronx. Who do we have from Staten Island?
01:00:11
Carole Harsch: Staten Island. Yes. Juliana. Juliana Mangano from Staten Island. She has the easiest commute on race day. She can just basically walk from her house to Fort Wadsworth. She is a Staten Island native. She was born and raised on Staten Island, loves the borough. And she really started running because her cousin suffered a cardiac event while he was out on a routine run and he unfortunately passed away. And that really jump started her running journey. And not only that, but her professional career. She was inspired to become a professional sports athletic trainer and an EMT. And she says that she runs to finish the run that he never got to finish.
And this story is deeply personal, I feel like to New York Road Runners because we have put such an emphasis on runner health and safety, and educating runners on how they can help in any sort of medical situation. So Juliana is so touched to be running on behalf of her cousin. And she talks about it being a very full circle moment running her first marathon that starts in the borough that means so much to her that she was born in, raised in. Her whole family still lives on Staten Island. So we're very lucky to have her on the team.
01:01:24
Rob Simmelkjaer: I love it. No commute to the starting line. That's a beautiful thing. Bit of a commute home, but that's okay. She'll be fine.
All right. Our Brooklynite is Giovanni Kyle Sabio, who was born actually in Manila in the Philippines and grew up unhoused.
01:01:39
Carole Harsch: Yes. And Giovanni, he goes by Gio. He has lived across a lot of the boroughs, but Brooklyn is his home. And so yes, he is an immigrant and he grew up with his mom. They really struggled financially and they grew up unhoused. He didn't really see a path forward and his mom always told him, " Education is how you're going to get out of this. Don't forget your education. Just strive for that, and that will be your saving grace and your light."
And that is exactly what happened. He graduated from college, and he feels like education has given him a sense of agency that he lost in his childhood. And along with that, running has become that same thing. He goes for a run and feels free and independent and like anything is possible. And not only did he grow up unhoused, but he also talks a lot about being a queer person and how that had also made it difficult for him struggling with his own identity. But now running has given him the chance to embrace that, embrace the parts of him that he may have been afraid to share when he was younger. And this will also be his first marathon. We have a lot of first time marathoners. We have Dave Obelkevich on one end of the spectrum who has run all 50 of the five- borough marathons, and then we have plenty of first timers, and a lot of in between.
01:02:59
Rob Simmelkjaer: I love it. I really love it. From Queens, Alan Kaufman, he's been running it for a while too. Started in 1992, has run 13 races as an Achilles International guide for athletes with disabilities, but he has found himself running with new challenges in his life.
01:03:19
Carole Harsch: Yeah, I think Alan has a fascinating story. He mentioned that he started as an Achilles guide. So he was someone that was helping athletes with disabilities complete their TCS New York City Marathon runs. And then he himself became an athlete with disability requiring a guide to help him. He was diagnosed with cancer in his brain back in 2017 and his lungs. So he went on a whole health journey, a lot of cancer treatment. He is now in remission and cancer free, but that was a huge change in his life. And now for the last several years since 2018, he has run the marathon, but as an athlete with disability that has an Achilles guide running with him. But he loves the New York City Marathon. He says it's the best day of the year. It's the greatest sporting event in the world. He would never miss it regardless of what's happening with him. So we love Alan and he really brings that Queens energy.
01:04:17
Rob Simmelkjaer: There's nothing like the Queens energy, absolutely. I know they'll be packed out in Long Island City rooting him on. We talked about Mildred from the Bronx and we talked about Dave and others from Manhattan. Carole, you get the opportunity to speak to all of these runners and you get to learn from them, hear their stories. Is there something that you take away from having these conversations with all these incredible people? I mean the resilience that so many of them had to have had just to get to this point.
01:04:50
Carole Harsch: Absolutely. I mean, this will be my fifth TCS New York City Marathon season working at New York Road Runners and Team Inspire's without a doubt my favorite project every single year. I end up forming very close relationships with these people, and I often am in tears when they're sharing their stories. And just to know that our team plays a small role in them having this milestone moment, the best day of their life, there's truly no feeling better than watching them cross the finish line and embracing them with a hug, and just recognizing that we helped in such a minor way after everything that they overcame, that they get to be a TCS New York City Marathon finisher.
And I think the world needs good stories right now. I think it's easy to feel down about the world, and Team Inspire reminds us that humanity is good. We have these people out here who day in and day out are trying their hardest and they're proving every single day just to get up, put one foot in front of the other. And I think what I get away from it is just being a better person. I think telling their stories and talking to them makes me become a better person. And I really just thank them all for trusting New York Road Runners with their deeply vulnerable and personal stories, and it's our responsibility and our duty to tell them in a thoughtful way.
01:06:17
Rob Simmelkjaer: Yeah, it's great. You and the team do such a great job finding these folks and then helping us tell their stories. And we'll be seeing them all out there in places like this podcast, doing media, all kinds of interviews. And obviously a lot of them are running for charity. So if you hear about one of them and you love their story, you're inspired by them, make sure you support them, right? Go find the charity they're running for. And that's a big part of what we're trying to accomplish this year and hope that we'll get lots of support from folks listening for all of these incredible runners.
Carole, amazing stuff. Thank you so much for joining. I was impressed. I just ran through those folks, and you knew each one of their stories like the back of your hand, so you are clearly deeply into Team Inspire. Great work.
01:07:06
Carole Harsch: Thank you. I love Team Inspire, I love talking about them. I can't pick a favorite, they're like my children. I love them all equally, but thank you for giving me the opportunity to talk about Team Inspire. And like Rob said, you can read all about them on our website and see them all across our channels.
01:07:21
Rob Simmelkjaer: All right. Carole Harsch from our PR team here at New York Road Runners. Thanks a lot.
01:07:25
Carole Harsch: Thank you.
01:07:27
Rob Simmelkjaer: And that does it for another episode of Set the Pace. We want to thank our guest today, Dr. Jordan Metzl from the Hospital for Special Surgery, and Carole Harsch with our Team Inspire runners. Hope you enjoyed the episode. Make sure you tell your friends, leave us a rating. If you're training, get in those miles, enjoy them. We'll see you next week.