NYC Marathon: a celebration of creativity

What did I do in New York for a week? As much as possible.

Nov 07, 2025

NYC: a celebration of creativity?

The thing about runners is that when we’re running together, we talk about anything but running. And the opposite is true.

When millions of runners converge upon a city like New York, and ‘only’ 60,000 are running the marathon, there’s a lot of time to talk about running. How we did that last week was absolutely fascinating.

Wednesday

This was the anchor to my being in New York. I have the deepest respect for Laura Green, so when she asked if I wanted to be part of a storytelling event she was building, there was only one answer.

It was a deep exercise in doing something brand new. While I’ve been hosting panels for the past 18 months, I’ve never performed live in front of an audience before and it was so much fun once I was onstage.

First Timers with Lydia Keating (l) and Laura Green (r) at Union Hall, Brooklyn, NY on 10/29/2025

More than that fun, there was no shakeout run or pizza – just a bunch of immensely talented people (and me) using their creativity to talk about running. It was beautiful, and a true honor to be a part of.

More words and photos on my Instagram.

Thursday

Thursday was one of those scheduling nightmares where I thought I was only going to get one thing done, but once a historic storm passed overhead, I somehow managed to attend every engagement.

First, I went to the screening of German ultrarunner Mikey Kratzer’s short film, which documents the “aesthete-meets-athlete” running the 500km from LA to Vegas AKA The Speed Project, which he ran solo in 2025 for the second time.

I’ve been connecting with Mikey on and off for a while now, and I love his relentless, joyous perspective on life. It was perfect to see hundreds of people turn up from all over the world to celebrate his achievements and existence.

Then I hot-footed it half a mile to see Josh Lynott read his editorial from the latest edition of Mental Athletic before he got swarmed by his own legion of fans.

The sheer number of ways Josh’s poems were disseminated across the city this week was wonderful. It’s easy to believe that there’s no room left for creative beauty in this breakneck-paced world that constantly thrusts an AI agenda down our throats, so seeing 1,000 hard copies of Josh’s gentle words floating on the breeze was truly life-affirming.

Powered by Maurten, I guess you can say Josh’s poetry is fuel for living?

Next, I walked another mile to the Craft x Lucia popup with Cole Townsend. There was a shakeout run, there was free pizza and free beer, and it was all brought together by a collaboration between a Swedish shoe company and a NYC pizza joint that made zero sense. Even after explanations!

Luckily, I love pizza and beer, and the Craft super shoe was designed by recent interviewee, Richard Kuchinsky. I still don’t understand why the event happened, but I had a nice time. Maybe that’s all that matters??

Either way, that Thursday evening felt like SXSW, the annual music showcase festival in Austin which has hundreds of concerts every day. Yes. Hundreds. New York’s fast pace takes it out of me at the best of times, but I was absolutely cooked after this one.

Friday

The plan that I was most excited for was meeting up with

Cole Townsend

Lee Glandorf

and

Josh Lynott

for an international Substack writers’ meetup. We met at the Tracksmith pop-up where Cole was slinging an expertly-curated selection of vintage NYC Marathon tees.

That time those people who write about running on Substack went to New York.

On Monday, Lee wrote about how running isn’t cool (and that’s why we love it), and I feel the exact same way about writing. That was confirmed when someone saw the four of us and made a comment about us having a nerds’ meetup. Yeah, we’re the ones sitting at the front of the classroom with our hands up, begging to answer the teacher’s question, and we love it. Hopefully you do as well.

We went to see the Currently Running pop-up (that’s founder Nash Howe photobombing our cute pic), and then the Soar pop-up before visiting the Miler Running pop-up, which was a must-see for me.

I absolutely love Miler founder Ben Morrow’s dedication to New York. In a world where most gear looks the same and is of comparable quality, it’s that soupcon of storytelling that can help differentiate. All Miler’s gear is constructed in NYC, and the brand launched an architecture-based 5k run during marathon week. That little bit of thought and creativity is exactly how I want to see value added. Plus, get a load of their special marathon shirt with this year’s marathon entry fee on it.

A celebration of the NYC Marathon c/o Miler Running.

Interestingly, Ben spoke about bringing all those pop-ups under one roof next year. It would be a smart move for any young brands who spent too much money renting out a nothingy SoHo space last week, and would cut down the number of steps people like me took.

Sunday

What about Saturday?? I took a day off from running engagements. I went to an Arsenal supporters’ bar in Brooklyn to watch the Gunners before heading to Broadway to see Bill & Ted in Waiting for Godot. Self care.

As for the marathon itself, I posted up at mile 21 with my friend Victoria Lo from Chinatown Runners. It was the site of the We Run Uptown / Nike cheer zone, and it was loud.

The NYRR tracking app was pure garbage, so I missed 90% of the people I was looking out for, but did manage to see my good friends

Sean Johnson

who was supporting his wife, and Andrew Chen who looked fresh as a daisy three-quarters of the way through his first marathon, even though he assured me he was far, far from ok.

I’ll be posting a ton of photos on Instagram, so follow me there if you like that. Otherwise, thanks for reading.

My book, This is Running

While I was in NYC, I also made sure to pop in to meet the American publishers of my book, This is Running, which is out in spring 2026. Rizzoli Books also publishes the likes of Tom Ford, Supreme, and Jenny Saville. I’m certain they’re all as thrilled about that as I am.

You can pre-order my book right now, and I hope you do. I highly recommend giving your business to an independent bookstore, and you can do that very easily via the Bookshop.org links below if you’re in the US or UK.

Leftover merch

I said it was a fascinating week, and that it was exhausting, which is why (along with unpacking the contents of my basement which had a leak a couple of months ago, so was emptied for construction work) it’s taken until Friday to write this up.

One piece of good news is that while unpacking the 60 boxes, I found five Running Sucks hats. Buy one if you want one, please! It’ll 1) help to pay my insurance deductible and 2) get them out of my house at last! I’ll not be making these again.

Thanks for reading
Raz x