A Brooklyn loop

Central Park is a runner’s heaven, with a healthy mixture of wide, hard roads of asphalt, gravelly footpaths, immense grassy fields and even a couple of ponds for the adventurous triathlete. But there is more to running in Manhattan than just Central Park. This morning, we stood up bright and early for a short – or so we thought – run over to Brooklyn and back. First lesson for all of our fellow country boys out there: if you plan on crossing a river in a big city, and the map shows you a bridge crossing it, don’t try and find the start of the bridge by the water’s edge. Williamsburg bridge is 2227 metres long and starts quite a bit into Manhattan itself. After having backtracked our steps for at least six blocks, we finally ran onto and across the bridge over to Brooklyn. Williamsburg is home to a ultraconservative branch of Judaism whose members are often referred to as hasidic Jews, you know the ones with black suits, wide-brimmed black hats and long curls falling to their shoulders. Williamsburg is home to around 57 000 hasidic jews and they were very much in evidence as we ran through their district. After having run around Brooklyn Navy Yard, we managed to find our way up onto Brooklyn Bridge, probably New York’s most iconic bridge and built already in 1883. So the short run ended up taking us almost 1h 45min, measuring 16k. In our defence, we made a lot of stops for photo shoots, as you can see.

Williamsburg bridge in the distance

Hurricane Sandy didn’t really treat the trees of Manhattan very nicely

A halo’ed Jakob in Williamsburg, Brooklyn

If it’s 2 degrees, you can always run in shorts, but never, ever forget your gloves

Iconic silhouette

And to cap it off: scrambled eggs, bacon and French toast. But only if you’ve earned it running 16k!

And finally, even though our trip to New York didn’t quite end up as we planned, we still have managed to raise 24 437 SEK for Unicef’s work for the rights of children. We know we’ve been badgering you quite a bit, but we’re enormously happy that it has paid off and are happy to announce that we will continue to do so during future races. Thank you all so very, very much for your generosity and kindness! Yesterday, a mail from Unicef UK found it’s way to our mailbox, and on a final note, we would like to share it with all of you:

Dear Jakob Klcovansky, Jakob Kegel, Jozef Klcovansky and Per Frydenberg, 

We are really gutted that the New York City Marathon could not take place this year due to Hurricane Sandy and that all your training and hard work could not be put to the test, however we are really happy that in aid of UNICEF you all raised a huge £1,885.74 for our work with children! Well done for achieving your target and for challenging yourselves to such an impressive marker. We really appreciate your support! The money you raised will help UNICEF’s work with vulnerable children around the world. It will help stop children dying from preventable diseases, get children into school and protect children from violence and abuse. Your support means that somewhere in the world, children’s lives will be made safer and happier. Thank you so much for all of the effort you have put into the training and fundraising, we hope you decide to run in next years New York City Marathon for team UNICEF as well as other running events which can be found here.

Many thanks,

Patrick Ward

Events Intern

That’s all for us for this year!