• Adidas Urban Run

  Pier 62, Chelsea Piers, 212-336-6000

  Tuesday evenings at 7 p.m. and Sundays at 10 a.m., runners of all levels gather at the Adidas Urban Run headquarters at Pier 62, rain or shine, for hard-core running coaching that’s free of charge. Participants may be training for marathons or 5ks, others just want the motivation of running with a group. The pacesetters, Jillian Mastroianni and Brady Crain, are armed with Polar pace monitors (Mastroianni ran the New York City marathon in three hours; Crain holds the masters world record for the men’s 4x200). They lead groups down the Hudson River Park walkway. One pacer’s group does a four-mile loop, the other sets off for a longer, six-to-eight-mile trip. When runners return, they’re given water and nutrition bars (compliments of Adidas) and led through a cooldown. The more often you run, the more “points” you get to spend on merchandise at the Adidas Sports Performance store in Soho.

From the 2007 Best of New York issue of New York Magazine