5 Questions For New York Road Runners CEO Mary Wittenberg

Published by Well and Good NYC on May 1, 2014

As the CEO and president of New York Road Runners (NYRR), Mary Wittenberg is basically the mayor of the city’s enormous running scene. Not to mention the community she presides over as the race director of The New York City Marathon, which last year included more than 50,000 runners and two million spectators.

And despite the fact that the former lawyer runs about 25 races a year in addition to her regular morning jogs in Central Park, Wittenberg says she’s perpetually amazed by everything New York has to offer runners. “You can do more running here than most any other place in the world,” she says.

Still, since she took over the position in 2005 (she’s been at NYRR since 1998), she’s worked to make the running world—in New York and beyond—even more inclusive and expansive, by introducing youth programs and overseeing the increasing diversification of the running clubs, in age, race, gender, and skill level.

We caught up with the powerful pavement founder for a chat about New York’s unique running attributes, women in running, and more.

1. Was running always your sport of choice? I actually grew up in a very athletic family, and I was horrible at sports. I didn’t have an arm like a boy, like my sister, who was 10 months younger, did. I always aspired to be more athletic. I really loved sports, but what I was good at was gymnastics and cheerleading. Then, my mentor in high school was a rower. I found rowing at West Side Rowing Club in Buffalo and absolutely loved it. Rowing is what I call a hard-work sport. You need to have skill, and there’s a lot of training. I rowed from my senior year in high school until senior year of college and also was a coxswain for the men’s team in college.

2. Then how did you make the switch to running? I was trying to be competitive in rowing and through training, I learned I was decent at distance running. I came to like the running as part of what I did. My senior year in college, in the middle of a happy hour dare, I agreed to do a 4-miler the next day. I won the race and the cross country coach was there, and he said, “Give me two weeks, and I’ll turn you into a runner.” Later, I naively called the Notre Dame Law School men’s running coach. There wasn’t a women’s team, so I said, “Can I run with your team?” He said no, but later I met him, and he used to have this cadre of hang-arounders. He let us run with the men’s cross country team.