In a 1980s TV commercial, Sy Sperling declared, “I’m not only the Hair Club president; I’m also a client.” That, Rob Simmelkjaer says, describes his role as CEO of New York Road Runners.
He hosts NYRR’s podcast, Set the Pace, runs with their clubs, takes part in their races, and even participates in their plogging events, all while advancing their mission to build healthier lives and stronger communities through initiatives like their recently launched Team for Climate.
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Rob came to NYRR from the corporate world, where he was a senior executive and on-air journalist at NBC Sports and ESPN. He had been on the boards of nonprofits, but serving as the CEO of NYRR is the first time that he has worked at one. “So I had some things to learn about how one talks about a nonprofit,” he says. “And whereas I may have said something a certain way at ESPN or NBC, about a new project or an initiative or something like that, here at Road Runners, focusing on the mission of what we do as a nonprofit, as an organization, was something new, but also amazing for me. A big part of the reason I took the job was to have that ability to be focused on mission and not on profit. So that was an adjustment, but it was one that I really enjoyed.”
Joining NYRR also brought running back into his life to an extent it hadn’t been for many years. Taking part in NYRR’s races and being around other runners at the office changed his relationship with the sport. “I think it’s kind of like the difference between casually dating and being married, you know, seeing someone once in a while, hanging out, saying hi, having a fun time versus every day and tying your life up with someone, right? So it really was that difference.
“And I think I came to appreciate it a lot more in a lot of ways because I met so many people for whom running was really central to their lives. I really started to learn about the kind of impact it made on people’s lives, and would have people come up and tell me what Road Runners meant to them, what running meant to them, how running had, in a lot of cases, saved their lives, sometimes literally, in some ways. People who had illnesses and their doctors told them, ‘I think your running is the reason that you were able to get through this’; who had difficult periods in their life, challenging things, maybe it was an illness, a divorce, lost job, whatever it might have been, and they would say, ‘Running really got me through that.’ So I started to realize the impact that running could have, and I always knew, but to see it and to hear about it from so many different people, I think made me even more of a believer in the sport than I had been before.
“Then I also started to feel it myself because the more I was running, I started to feel great, feel physically great. And obviously there’s the mental health aspect of it, as well. So I definitely have dived back into the sport in a way that I probably hadn’t really been since the couple of marathons that I ran and since I ran cross country back in high school.”
He also discovered the group dynamics that can make running special. “I got really involved in our group training program at New York Road Runners. I run one or two times a week with that. I have been a solo runner pretty much my entire life. Since high school or whatever, I’ve always run alone and I still do mostly, just because of time commitments. But I really did start to discover the power of running with other people, and how that can push you and make you better. And that’s not something I really had appreciated before.”
While he may not have run with them, it was his friends’ running that always interested Rob more than the feats of professional athletes. “Of course I have tremendous respect for the elite athletes and have gotten to know that world better, but I did not come into this job as a fan of elite running. I was not following Runner’s World to see who competed how and who was setting records. It was not on my radar screen. What was on my radar screen was people I knew who were running races, right? I was donating to my friends’ charities who are running this Berlin Marathon or this Chicago, New York, whatever, marathon. So I knew of my friends’ running. And that was what I thought was interesting. And still, to me, what’s most interesting is all the people who show up at the starting line of the marathon or any of our other races and the story of what got them there.”
For Rob, some of the most interesting runners are the ones who aren’t at the front of the pack. “What I love most about what we do at Road Runners is how long we keep our finish lines open, whether it’s a 10K in June or the marathon at 9 p.m.. We just welcome and celebrate all these folks, and they are just as excited to get to the finish line, and they have accomplished just as much, if not more, than the people who come in at six minutes a mile. So I really love those folks and I try to make a real point of being there as late as I can to give out the high fives to the folks who are run-walking, or walking even, throughout the entire race.”
Celebrating all of their participants is one way that NYRR connects to the community; another is through their sustainability initiatives. Those had been difficult for them to focus on during the pandemic and its aftermath, but, Rob says, when he joined the organization, “I saw a real opportunity for us to jump in with both feet. And so I did make climate kind of the focus out of the gate, and just started with the obvious point of, hey, you know, this event we’re putting on every year has a pretty significant carbon footprint. We’ve got people flying from all over the world to run this race. We’ve got all the stuff that we’re doing to put the event on in New York, and the transportation to the event and all that; how can we work to lower the carbon footprint of this event? And it took a little while. We had to brainstorm a bunch of different ideas, but we came up with this idea of Team for Climate, and it’s been a really good step forward for us.
“It is the first entry method that’s been created by any of the world marathon majors that is focused on offsetting the carbon footprint of the race. We had about 250 runners who were able to get into the marathon this year, and they made a commitment to help us raise funds to offset our carbon emissions for this event.
“The funds that are raised by this group are going to an awesome project with an organization that sets aside land in upstate New York. So we love that it’s a New York-based project. And they are setting aside land that’s going to be protected from development and will remain forest land that will obviously have this impact that all forest land does of capturing carbon from the atmosphere and helping clean our air and all of these things. So it’s just a great way for us to use one of the things that we know is precious in our community, entries into the TCS New York City Marathon, and develop this community of people who are committed to making this a sustainable event.”
So committed, that the places sold out within minutes and they’ve raised nearly $800,000, far surpassing the original goal of $600,000. “It was unbelievable,” Rob remembers. “We put them on sale at noon and at 12:05, I got a text saying they were sold out. I was like, ‘Wait a second. What? Did something go wrong? What happened?’ No, they were sold out in two minutes and change. All of these spots were gone. Now that’s a testament to how hard it is to get into the marathon, obviously, but what I’ve seen is that it wasn’t just that they wanted to run the marathon, but these folks actually wanted to do this and they wanted to have an impact. You can tell by the amount that they raised, which was so far above the minimum. So this is a group that clearly really is passionate. We’ve got all kinds of people in this group and it’s been an incredible thing to see and such a great success story for us.
“They’re going to have the most sustainable possible experience that someone can have running our race at this point. So we’re really thrilled, and hopefully we’ll learn some things from them, actually, because I think there are still a lot more things we can do to make not just the marathon, but all of our races more sustainable.”
Resources:
New York Road Runners’ Instagram
Running for Real episode on the 2023 NYC Marathon and Kayleigh Williamson
