RBC Brooklyn Half Advice: "Panic Is Not a Pace" and More Wisdom from NYRR’s Ted Metellus

could root on Austin. And Austin earned his fifth star in the TCS London Marathon last weekend. Congratulations to Austin on that great accomplishment. He ran a really solid time, 3:46: 37, so only one star away. And we know that Austin is going to be running Berlin. Hopefully he came out of London healthy so he can run Berlin coming

up this fall for that big number six star. Hopefully Becs and her family are enjoying some time in the UK, her homeland after the London Marathon. And boy, what a London Marathon it was. It was a beautiful day. I was not there, but I got lots and lots

of reports from folks. We had a lot of Road Runners' people on the ground, including by the way, our guest on today's show, Ted Metellus, the race director of the TCS New York City Marathon, our chief event production officer. He was there. He'll be joining us to talk about that a little bit and also to talk about the upcoming RBC Brooklyn Half as well, so we'll hear from

Ted in a little while. But it just looked like an incredible day in London. And not only did they have a beautiful day, but they also broke a record. That's right, they broke our recently established record for the largest marathon in history. This record, it just keeps getting broken, whether it's New York, Berlin, Paris, now London, it's kind of like a beach ball getting bounced around from marathon to marathon.

But congratulations to Hugh Brasher and Nick Bitel and all the folks at London Marathon events for a great day and a beautiful, beautiful day for over 55, 000 runners in London. It was really a special day for everybody. Congrats to all the Road Runners members who ran as well and finished. We had a great contingency from Team for Kids,

TFK, over there. We just had an incredible day, so congrats to everybody listening who ran London or Boston for that matter. I was in Boston a couple of weeks ago and just it's such an incredible double, that Boston to London week is perhaps the biggest week in marathon running. And we know a lot of people who ran them both amazingly, would run Boston, hop on a plane,

turn around and run London six days later. I saw a lot of in Boston doing that, so congrats to everybody who ran anything over that great, great stretch of spring marathons. Meanwhile, this past weekend, we had a big day here in New York of our own. The Maybelline Women's Half was in Central Park, and let me tell you, it was a gorgeous weekend for running. It was

a little chilly. I know early in the morning there was a breeze, there was a bit of a chill, but people came out and the women just came out in droves. It's such a special event for all these women to get a chance to run together. Lots of men on the sidelines cheering them on. And Maybelline, what

a great partnership we have with them. People were so excited to come out and get all the great free stuff that Maybelline and the other brands that are part of L'Oreal were giving out at the Maybelline Women's Half. Hope everybody had a great day out there in Central Park. We had over 5, 000 women come out to run this event.

And a shout- out to the winner, Kaitlyn Fischer, who won with a terrific time of 1:19: 09 on that challenging Central Park course, but it was a great day for all concerned, so congratulations to everybody who ran on Sunday here in New York. Hope everybody had a great

day. Well, we're just over two weeks out from the RBC Brooklyn Half, and as I mentioned, we're going to have New York Road Runners chief event production officer and race director Ted Metellus, to tell us everything we need to know if you're running this year, so in a moment we're going to get to all of that. Then later in the show, Meb Keflezighi will be here for

today's Meb Minute. He's going to help us kick off mental health Awareness Month for the month of May with his thoughts on how running can contribute to your mental

wellness. And speaking of mental health awareness month, this coming weekend, we've got the New York Road Runners Mindful 5K, and we're so excited for the second year in a row to really have a race that shines a light on the importance of mental health and the role that running can play in improving all of our mental health. I'm excited to be out there for that. That's out

at Flushing Meadows Park in Queens. Hope to see many of you out there at the Mindful 5K coming up this weekend. Ready to see real results. Try the Peloton app for free and get expert design running programs that build speed, strength, and endurance. Run outdoors with real time coaching as instructors guide your form and pace every step

of the way. Plus, Strength for Runners, a program built to help runners boost muscle and prevent injury, complements your training so you can crush your goals even faster. Try the app for free for 30 days and download it now from the app store or Google Play, terms apply. Peloton, the official digital fitness partner of New York Road

Runners. All right, as we get set for the RBC Brooklyn Half, we welcome back to the show, the man who makes it all happen at big events like the Brooklyn Half New York Road Runners chief event production officer and the director of all these great events, Ted Metellus. Ted, nice to see you back here in the United States of America after your travels overseas to the London

Marathon. We were in Boston together before that. How's it going?

York Road Runnering and community globally. It was really amazing to just run it to so many folks that came over and said thank you for the great work that we're doing, inspiring our youth, our seniors, keeping people moving. It was good times, it was fuel for the soul.

how do you think about this? You and I talk about this a lot, but how do you think about this record? It gets a lot of attention. People talk about it. Is it something people should be paying attention to? Is this

something that you think... At some point it's going to be a record that you can't break, you can't have, at least we can anytime soon, 100, 000 people in the marathon, so the question is there a ceiling for this record marathon size thing?

I think it's fantastic. High tide raise all boats. A conversation we were having as race directors and a conversation we've been having in the industry is six years ago, seven years ago, there was a lot to talk about how do we keep the marathon going? How do we keep the interest and engagement with the marathon going? How do we change the demographic as many marathoners we're aging

out? And we are seeing a pretty significant change in the marathon distance and so many people getting out there and really marking this as a goal that they want to accomplish. You talked about Berlin, Paris did it as well last year, so we are seeing this on a global scale where so many people are saying, " I want to run a marathon, I want to train for a marathon. I want to engage with this 26. 2 mile journey. I want

others to do it with me." And they see their loved ones, family, friends, and neighbors do it and they're then inspired to do the same thing. That's what we're starting to see now is this tremendous boom in running, particularly in the marathon distance, but everything in between.

RBC Brooklyn Half. And Ted, this race, speaking of popularity, continues to get more and more popular. We had a record number of people try to get into this race this year. The numbers are going to be big yet again. Hopefully we get good weather. And I think tied to that popularity, Ted, is a big decision that you and your team made to change the format of the start of the RBC Brooklyn Half and increase the number

of waves. And this is something we talked about for a while. This was a two wave race, but the numbers just justify adding more waves. Can you talk about that decision, Ted, and what that's going to mean for the runners?

talk about that in a moment. But what we want to do to be able to facilitate a smooth operation for the 28, 000 runners was taking the same amount of time that we have for those two waves and breaking

them into four waves. And what that ultimately does is allow an easier flow for athletes to get bags dropped through security, pre- race needs as far as fluids, restrooms, things of that nature, and then making their way over to the start. There will be four starts for the RBC Brooklyn Half Marathon. First wave leaves at 7: 00 AM, second wave 7: 25, third wave at 7: 50 and the last wave

is at 8: 15. What's amazing is this is within the same timeframe that we were able to release the two waves that we had in previous years. Breaking that up there allows a little bit more space at the start, a little bit more space along the route and obviously a smooth finish with the athletes making their way down to Coney Island.

miles, so this is going to open that up. And Ted, do you think that runners will see a noticeable difference with this new setup?

to these larger scale marquee events. Rob, when you think about the RBC Brooklyn Half Marathon and its history and its legacy, this event is 42 years of running, 42 years, and if you were to take a guess at the number of finishers we've had to date, not counting what we're going to be doing in 18 days of

today's recording, but we've had over 334,275 finishers. The race used to actually start in Coney Island and end in Prospect Park then, and we did that from '96 to 2008. And then it was in 2009 that we went from a beautiful Prospect Park neighborhood area, so that's the Grand Army Plaza, that is the Brooklyn Museum, that's the Brooklyn Library,

that's the Prospect Park Zoo. Those are all of the beautiful things that you see now and have been seeing since 2009 as we make our way down to beautiful

Coney Island. I share all that for context. You know I'm a big fan of context to tell you where we've been and where we're going to see that the growth of what we do at New York Road Runners has been tremendously impactful and there is not going to be very many people, including you and I, that haven't ran in

this race. The last time I ran this race was in 2017 and I dug up my medal and my medal badge here and there's my medal from the last time I ran in 2017-

event that gets people out there. And we'll be sprinkling in a little bit when we chat about the youth component as well that we'll see out there, so-

for you. Carry my hopes and dreams of running the RBC Brooklyn Half with you that day. I need you to do it for me.

do actually read the survey results. We actually read the results, we read the comments, we hear what people are saying, and so we heard comments about course crowding and that is why you're hearing about four waves in this

race going forward. We also have heard comments about the pre- party and it's out there in Brooklyn Bridge Park and the challenges that people do sometimes have, if they're maybe living in Manhattan or working in Manhattan or they live in the northern suburbs or even New Jersey, it can be challenging to get to Brooklyn on the Wednesday, Thursday,

Friday before the race to pick up your bib. There's two things that we want people to know about that. First of all, we did make one change the pre- party hours or earlier this year. We're starting an hour early one day, so we want to... Make sure you check the hours because we do have earlier hours for the pre- party this year on Wednesday, 10:00 to 8:

30, Thursday, 10: 00 to 8: 30 again. Friday the last day we opened at 9: 00 AM, so 9:00 AM to 7: 30. The last bib pick up will be at 7: 00 PM, so you can get there a little bit earlier than we've had it in past years, which we're hoping makes it a bit easier for folks if they want to get there before work starts or whatever to pick up

their bib. Another thing that we... This is not new, but we want to make sure people really understand is that you don't have to personally go to pick up your bib. If you have a friend, if you're in a running club and your run club captain is going, they can pick it up for you. You can have another person do it for you, and that should help a lot of folks get their bibs for the RBC

Brooklyn Half. We want to make sure people know that, we want this to be as convenient as possible for everybody. All that said, Ted, the pre- party is a really good time, especially if the weather's nice. It is a fun place to hang out to enjoy the late spring in New York City. It's on the water, there's music, there's all kinds of fun there. I highly encourage people to set aside a few hours. We don't call

it the expo, right Ted? We call it the pre- party because it's a party that is pre the race, so come check it out.

in Maimonides Park there. One other thing too, Rob and I love that you touched on not only the times, but also the proxy pickup component because that helps manage people's experience overall. But just the number of ways to get there, literally every single way that you could traverse, you can get there. There's buses that take you over to

Brooklyn Bridge Park. You could jump on the subway, the A, the C, the F, the 2, the 3, the R, they all make their way down there. The 4, the 5, they all make their way down to that general area then and

you could walk on over. There's even ferry service, so taking the ferry from Governors Island, the New York City ferry is there, the East River ferries, the South Brooklyn ferries, there's ferries that are coming in as far north as the Bronx to make their way down to the venue, so looking at how you get there will help

speed the process up. We will have volunteers along the way that are sprinkled about as you're making your way to the park to show you how to get to the Pier number 2. But yes, food, music, beverages, entertainment,

incredible sites, amazing place to meet up with. It's open to the public, so please come on down and see the different programming activities and all of the things that we have going on leading into race weekend.

bib other than making it to that pre- party. All right, so Ted, let's get to the course itself and then we'll talk about the post- party. And we've talked about the waves. For those who haven't run it before, Ted, what do you think makes this course special?

some pretty cool iconic locations in that general space. They're making their way down Washington, make the turn on Empire and out in back on Flatbush Avenue going around beautiful Grand Army Plaza running past the Prospect Park Zoo and entering into Prospect Park. When they're making their way around Prospect Park, there'll be a bit of a climb as

they're making their way around the park there. That first section of the park in the course is amazing, so many crowds out there, so much love, so much energy as you get yourself up. It's funny, for those of us who have run races, you always want to take your time on the front end. You don't want to go too far too fast on the front end of the race there, so you want to pace yourself as you

make the way through. Once you exit out of the park, then it opens up to Ocean Parkway, nice and wide there. That's when you can really see where your training has been throughout the winter here, coming into the early part of the spring and lay the hammer as you're making your

way down. When you're making your way down on Ocean Parkway, I want you to take a moment and you'll start seeing some of the 1700 youth that will be participating in the Boardwalk Run, the kids run that we have there. Those are our rising New York Road Runners youth, your future of the sport here, our future of the sport there that'll be running different dashes. The event programming and activities

on the youth side starts with our wheelchair competitors. That'll be starting at approximately 7: 30 AM. And then we'll have stage 2 and stage 3 going off following that. And all programs will be running from approximately 7:0 AM to 9: 55. Once you're registered, pick up your bibs, make sure you can do bib pickup on- site as well. Asser Levy Park is the venue that you could pick up

all your pre- event elements there for our youth. But back to the adults there as they're making their way down Coney Island, making their way onto the boardwalk. When we were talking about elements of the event that we have done to enhance, we used to many years ago, run up a pretty narrow path to get onto the boardwalk.

Last year we built this beautiful ramp now to get the athletes up and onto the boardwalk there, so that was a huge plus to help elevate their participant experience as they're making their way out. A couple of quick things to see on the course themselves, and I highly recommend folks to take time out, look at the map and look at the elements that are on the map.

There will be ten aid stations on this course. Okay, water, Gatorade and Maurten Gel that will be out there for the athletes there. Plan accordingly on that. Hydration, you can bring your own personal hydration with you to run this event there so you have that available to you. There will be seven medical stations on the route as well

to provide support for the athletes as needed. We will have tons, and when I say tons, tons of entertainment on the course and cheer stations on the course, so run clubs, run crews will be out there. Cheer partners will be out there from New Balance, but also bands, music and vibes that'll be out there on the course as well. The

route is going to be well- supported. Runners will have an amazing time while they're out there really enjoying themselves as they see the sights and sounds of Brooklyn.

a little early for the weather right now. That's the thing about Brooklyn, Ted, in May, there's a lot of different weather you could have. You could have a nice cool, perfect day. That's definitely a day that could also be warm, so be paying attention to that weather.

the event. But definitely pay attention to what you're going to wear that day. If it's cooler temps in the morning and it slowly starts to warm up, make sure you dress appropriately for that. We will be transporting your gear from the start to the finish, so there'll be gear vehicles, gear trucks that will be parked on stage over

at Eastern Parkway. The team will be able to guide you there that you could drop your bags off, so please get there early enough so you can get everything dropped off along the way.

so much. Cruise yourself down there. Our partners at the MTA will have trains making their way down, the two and the three, making your way over to Grand Army Plaza. Walk over, there'll be direct signage to direct athletes to what side of Eastern Parkway you'll be going to line up. Again, read your material that's there, but panic

is not a pace. 45 minutes to an hour beforehand is enough time for you to drop your bags off, get screened, pre- race fluids, stretch and boogie.

love it. All right, Ted, so our runners have made it to Coney Island. They have crossed the finish line on the beautiful Coney Island boardwalk. They have gotten their

beautiful medals that we put together for this race. Now it's time for the after party, and I think this is one of the best events we have at New York Road Runners is the after party of the RBC Brooklyn Half because we have such a great venue to work with in Maimonides Ballpark there, and it's just a great place

to hang out. Sometimes I feel like it is the race, is the after party because everybody just wants to hang out and have a good time.

our partners in the Coney Island Alliance, Luna Park. They will be open, businesses will be there, restaurants, bars, all the places that will be open there on Surf Avenue right by the finish, so folks can come over there. Also at the ballpark, concessions will be open. You can get something to eat, you can get something to drink. There'll

be music and entertainment on the field itself. Park up on the seats, the jumbotron screen will be there and on and playing, showing images of the athletes, showing pictures of the athletes, so it's really a cool time to be able to meet your loved ones, family and friends and

have a really good time at that event. Some other things too that we want to know from our partner's side, we definitely want to say a huge thank you to our teams to ensure one, our volunteers that will be out there, see a volunteer, thank a volunteer from start to finish and even at the pre- party, so you definitely want to

show them love. Medical distribution that will be there, the medical tents and services that'll be there, the HSS recovery zone that will be there for athletes to get some post- race stretching and loosening up, recovery bags that will have all kinds of food, drink and nutrition in there to get you set there. All of those elements will be prepped for

you once you cross that finish line. And I think, Rob, if I'm correct, we'll also be doing a little bit of a live podcast at the finish as well.

excited about. And then we're going to have the post- party podcast, that's going to be right after the race, obviously late on Saturday morning, so please come see us. If you want to come check out the podcast live, Thursday at the pre- party or Saturday at the after- party and we're going to have an incredible show there

at the after- party. We're going to have a surprise guest plus Olympian and running coach, Kim Conley, will be joining us there, so looking forward to seeing everybody out there. I love Ted. And we've got folks who come out and see the podcast live. I just had one this morning, say

hi to me on the subway. Set the Pace listener who came to one of our live episodes, so we love seeing our listeners in person, so make sure you come check it out. Now Ted, before I let you go, let's talk about the fans, the spectators a little bit. They're such a big part of what make these

races great. If you are someone who's got a loved one running the RBC Brooklyn Half, what are your tips for them, Ted, in terms of where they can catch their runners, the best places to be and to give out that love?

have as they're making their way. But definitely seeing them at the start when they make their way up and around Grand Army Plaza, amazing shot. It's the home screen on my phone, which is the Grand Army Plaza loop there when I ran it back in '17. It's such a great and iconic look there. Hop on the subway or you can make your way into Prospect Park, see them

as they make their way on Prospect Park. Then hop on the subway and head south onto Ocean Parkway. Catch them on the route on Ocean Parkway and then zip on down to Coney Island so you can have a Nathan's hot dog with them as celebrating their finish there of the RBC Brooklyn Half. There's multiple points along the route that loved ones can and be a part of

this journey with you. It shouldn't just be on race day, definitely come to the pre- party at Brooklyn Bridge Park, partake in that excitement with them as well. Document that journey and excitement. But definitely tracking them on the app and catching them along the way. Hopping on the subway, making your way south to Coney Island and meeting them there.

about seeing the ocean. There's just something that is human that is just inherently relaxing when you know you're going to see the ocean that day that makes you feel better about life. And so this race gives you that beautiful finish right there on Coney Island and one of the iconic

spots in New York City. Ted Metellus, the race director of the RBC Brooklyn Half the TCS New York City Marathon and all things as chief event production officer of New York Road Runners. Thank you my friend. Appreciate it. We'll see you out there in Brooklyn.

and contribute at NYRR. org/ donate. Now it's time for today's Meb Minute.

some daily, weekly, and monthly. It is beautiful and satisfying when you reach your goals and cross it out, so just make sure you are in good shape to have one goal leads to another.

Enjoy the miles everybody. We'll see you next week.