New York Road Runners has had extraordinary growth since Mary Wittenberg took over as chief executive in 2005, becoming not only the preeminent running organization in the United States but also a global leader in promoting the sport; such growth has led to a collision of ideals, however, with some local runners say she has destroyed the intimacy of what started as a modest grassroots club for like-minded runners.
Mary Wittenberg, the chief executive of New York Road Runners, figured it might be a rough day when she headed to Harlem in late August for the Percy Sutton 5K, a race held on a hazy, humid morning on the cusp of the fall marathon season.
"Because of the timing of it, I had a feeling it wasn't going to be good," she said.
Three days earlier, Wittenberg had announced a new policy for the New York City Marathon -- Road Runners' marquee event -- saying the organization would no longer transport runners' belongings from the start on Staten Island to the finish area in Central Park.
The decision was met with ire among many of the 60,000 entrants for the race. Calls and e-mails flooded into the club's headquarters. An online petition against the change was gaining momentum. And Wittenberg was the target of some of their displeasure.
When she stepped to the microphone to greet the 3,000-plus runners at the start of the 5K in Harlem, the crowd began to grumble. She defended the decision to discontinue the baggage check, saying the No. 1 complaint from marathoners had been the long line for bag collection at the finish.
By the time she was done, boos were raining down on her. Some runners flashed their middle fingers.
Less than two weeks later, Road Runners reinstituted the bag drop, with some modifications. But the issue and the reaction from the runners that morning -- at a race that began in 2009, under Wittenberg's leadership -- showed how Wittenberg has been a lightning rod at times during her almost-eight-year reign at Road Runners.
Since she took over as the chief executive in 2005, Road Runners, a nonprofit corporation, has had extraordinary growth in nearly every category, becoming not only the pre-eminent running organization in the United States but also a global leader in promoting the sport.
Wittenberg, a 50-year-old lawyer, has risen to the top of the sports world with it.
A wiry blonde whose worn sneakers are proof that she practices what she preaches, Wittenberg has become the face of road running in the United States and is one of the most influential women in sports worldwide, traveling the globe to attend events and court elite runners for Road Runners races.
Under Wittenberg, the field for the New York City Marathon has grown by nearly 30 percent, to 47,500 from 37,000, and is the largest in the world. The organization's staff has sprouted to about 150 from 60, and its revenue has more than doubled.
Road Runners youth programs have grown by more than 10 times, and the club's money goes to helping more than 130,000 children in and out of New York City -- and sometimes far outside the city. Last year, the club gave more than $38,000 to a program for young runners in Angola.
Such growth has led to a collision of ideals. Local runners say Wittenberg's expanding ambitions have eroded the ethos of Road Runners to serve athletes in New York. She has destroyed the intimacy of what started as a modest grass-roots club for like-minded runners, they say.
In what seems to be a double-edged victory, more runners than ever are registering for Road Runners races, but some races sell out or are as crowded as the Coney Island boardwalk on a summer day. Rising entry fees have priced out lower-income runners and alienated some longtime Road Runners members.
Gary Meltzer, who was voted off the board after Wittenberg became the chief executive, said the club had become "way too corporate," with board members chosen for their professional backgrounds rather than love of the sport.
In three weeks, nearly 50,000 runners are expected to gather at the foot of the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge on Staten Island to begin this year's New York City Marathon. When Wittenberg took over, the cost to run the 26.2-mile, five-borough tour of New York was $80 for Road Runners members. This year, it was $216 for members. For nonmembers from the United States, it was $255, more than $100 more than the fee for any of the four other major world marathons and nearly five times the cost of the London Marathon alone.
"Ten years ago, 12 years ago, we only had serious runners, and it was never an option for me to be the way we were then," Wittenberg said. "And it's not an option to be the way we are right now. We're not sorry we're successful. To our critics, we say, we want you to come along."
Living at a Frantic Pace
To come along, it is best to wear sneakers, because Wittenberg sprints through her days.
At 8:15 a.m. on Sept. 22, inside her two-bedroom apartment on East 78th Street, she had been up for two hours, tending to her two young sons and answering e-mails, before heading to the Fifth Avenue Mile races.
It was not her typical Saturday. She did not hop out of bed before 5 a.m. to meet her running group for an hourlong run around Central Park's bridle path. She did not watch her fellow runners head home to nap while she headed to a spinning class.
"She is always energetic and in a good mood," said Ben Brill, a stock trader who runs with Wittenberg several times a week. "But there's times when you can tell there's a lot on her plate."
Sometimes Wittenberg takes calls while training. But at the Fifth Avenue Mile, as at other Road Runners races, Wittenberg put away her iPhone long enough to play ambassador for the organization and for the sport. The role suits her.
Wittenberg, a former high school cheerleader, is wired to point out the sunnier side of things, like how running cures many ills -- obesity, loneliness, stress -- and how it can be a catalyst for a better life.
"If we can get everyone in the city to say, 'Hey, I can run a mile,' that's my goal," she said.
Wittenberg, who is 5 feet 6 inches and 115 pounds, tries to run in most of the club's races to stay attuned to the runners' experience, and the Fifth Avenue Mile was no exception.
She taped prescription anti-inflammatory patches to her knees, pulled compression socks onto each calf, then strapped an air cast on her right ankle. A former elite runner who still runs 40 to 50 miles a week, she recently sprained the ankle while warming up for a casual run with Meb Keflezighi, the 2004 Olympic silver medalist in the marathon.
Keflezighi is among the elite runners Wittenberg has gotten to know because she courts the world's top marathoners to run the New York City Marathon. Her efforts have stirred debate.
She has involved Road Runners in cultivating American runners, with the organization donating $1.3 million since 2006 to running clubs in places like Flagstaff, Ariz., and Mammoth Lakes, Calif., where top American distance runners including Keflezighi train.
"When I started, people couldn't name one American distance star, and in the United States, American stars are everything, everything," Wittenberg said. "We want people turning on the TV to see the stars, so they are inspired to run."
She has taken it upon herself to groom the next generation of American marathoners and turn them into heroes on the streets of New York. She wooed Keflezighi to the New York City Marathon in 2009, when he became the first American to win the race in 27 years.
She brought Shalane Flanagan to the marathon by inviting her to compete in a Road Runners 8K in 2008, then to ride in the women's pace car in 2009 so she could experience the marathon's atmosphere. Only after Wittenberg flew to Houston to watch Flanagan's half-marathon debut did Flanagan agree to run New York.
After finishing second in 2010, Flanagan fell to the ground in tears, with Wittenberg there to congratulate her and drape an American flag over her shoulders.
Yet all that leaves some local runners and coaches, like Mike Barnow, the head of the Westchester Track Club, scratching their heads. Barnow no longer takes his runners to Road Runners races because, he said, they have grown too expensive and too crowded, and the competition for limited prize money is too fierce.
"Mary is good at certain things," Barnow said. "She has connected very well with the high-level U.S. athletes, which is what she wanted to do. She was able to get the Olympic trials marathon into New York. What does that have to do with local membership? Not very much."
Wittenberg is known for her travels -- this month, she went to Bulgaria for the world half-marathon championships and to a meeting with international athletics officials. She tries to keep her trips short so she does not have to be away from her family for long. This summer, for example, she took two two-day trips to Eugene, Ore., for the Olympic track and field trials.
She invested time and money persuading Haile Gebrselassie, then the world-record holder in the marathon, to run in New York. She traveled to his native Ethiopia twice to court him. During the second trip, to close his marathon deal in 2010, she drove seven hours to his new resort for a ribbon-cutting event.
Yet for all the expense and buildup, Gebrselassie dropped out of the marathon at the 16th mile in his debut in New York in 2010, hobbled by a knee injury.
Rick Pascarella, the organizational leader of the Warren Street Social and Athletic Club, said Wittenberg should stay closer to home and let others do the recruiting. He said Wittenberg's goal of broadening the marathon's appeal to attract international runners, sponsors, television audiences and recreational runners had hurt the role of local racing clubs.
"If I were a corporation trying to make money, I would give her kudos," Pascarella said. "If I was a running organization trying to promote running as a sport, not physical fitness, I would give her bad marks."
Wittenberg said people made too much of her travels. So far this year, she has taken a dozen out-of-town trips over 27 days. She said she did not travel more than Allan Steinfeld, whom she replaced as the chief executive.
"Mary is a visionary, and it's good for her to get out there as the face of the organization and tell people what we stand for," said Norman Goluskin, a board member. "It's important for people to know that we are more than just the marathon. We feel that it's better for the organization to have her out front, rather than sitting behind a desk."
For some, though, that mission diminishes the prominence of local clubs, and their declining status crystallized around the annual Club Night awards ceremony that Road Runners hosts for local runners. For years, a dinner was held at the Hilton New York, but the event was downgraded several years ago to a ceremony at Hard Rock Cafe.
Pascarella said that he was told that the dinner had become too costly. In response, he asked why Road Runners was giving so much money to running clubs outside New York.
Wittenberg found herself in an awkward spot at the club ceremony in March when a photograph of Girma Tolla, an Ethiopian who runs for the West Side Runners Club, appeared on the screen because he was the 2011 runner of the year. Wittenberg fumbled through papers, unable to find his name.
"We have 50 or 60 Ethiopians, and they have similar names," said William du Pont Staab Jr., the president of the West Side Runners Club, who was at the ceremony. "But she should know the best runners."
The Legacy of Lebow
The way Wittenberg was calling out people's names at the Fifth Avenue Mile made it seem as if she knew every runner in Manhattan.
There was Michael! And Arlene! And Chris! And several women from the Black Girls Run! organization wearing T-shirts that said, "Preserve the Sexy."
Wittenberg -- who wore only a little eyeliner despite her staff's suggestion that she wear more makeup on race days because she might be on TV -- got love back. A New York City police sergeant gave her a hug. A middle-age man touched her shoulder and said, "Mary, love what you're doing!" At registration outside the Metropolitan Museum of Art, several volunteers shouted, "Great job, Mary!"
Before one of the men's races, Wittenberg addressed the runners, saying: "This race began 30 years ago with Fred Lebow. We just want to inspire you!"
Wittenberg acknowledges that she will never be able to replace Lebow, the flamboyant leader who put Road Runners and the marathon on the map. He presided over the first New York City Marathon in 1970, when it was held in Central Park and had only 127 runners, then built it into a five-borough mass race.
"If you look at what Fred did with the organization, I look like a wallflower," Wittenberg said.
After Lebow died of brain cancer in 1994, the organization sputtered. Steinfeld, Lebow's successor and a reserved former physics professor, needed help running the rapidly growing organization.
Wittenberg, a corporate lawyer specializing in banking transactions, took a pay cut of more than 50 percent when she was brought in to be Steinfeld's assistant in 1998. It was her dream job, she said, because she wanted to work more reasonable hours and start a family.
She also loved running, a sport she took up later in life. As the eldest of seven children growing up in an Irish-Catholic family in a suburb of Buffalo, Wittenberg -- née Robertson -- was not a good athlete. But the family was active in sports because her father, Jim, an accountant, was a coach and scorekeeper, and her mother, Mary Jo, a math teacher, was a huge sports fan.
"I finally did standing broad jump in middle school, because that was the only thing I could do," Wittenberg said.
In high school, she was a cheerleader before joining the West Side Rowing Club and finding the first sport she was good at. One summer, she was on the crew that won the women's lightweight eight at the Royal Canadian Henley Regatta, an international event.
"She was the ultimate competitor, but you would never guess that because she also was always friendly, social and funny," said Mary Kane, an assistant United States attorney who was the coxswain for Wittenberg's boat. "She's tougher than she looks."
At Canisius College in Buffalo, Wittenberg could not row because there was no women's crew, so she became the coxswain for the men's team, steering the boat and giving commands. As the scrawny, chatty person at the back of the boat, she led her two-man crew to victory at the Dad Vail Regatta, a large collegiate championship, in Philadelphia.
Her running career began on a whim one night when she was out with friends on the cross-country team. They bet that she could not finish a four-mile race the next morning. She finished -- in first place.
During law school at Notre Dame, she ran with the men's cross-country team daily because it helped her relieve stress.
"What she did was pretty rare because that first year of law school is such a bear, but she was exceptional," Joe Piane, the coach, said. "She always put on a good front, even though you knew she had to be working incredibly hard to do both."
Wittenberg continued training even after joining the law firm Hunton & Williams in Richmond, Va., where one of the partners, Allen Goolsby, let her leave every afternoon to train. She proved it was worth the trouble when she won the Marine Corps Marathon in 1987, finishing in 2 hours 44 minutes to qualify for the Olympic trials.
"She was pretty helter-skelter back then, pretty much chaos incorporated, and delightfully so," Goolsby said, recalling the time he visited her apartment to find one bottle of ginger ale in an otherwise empty refrigerator. "But she always brought this great intensity to what she was doing."
Wittenberg's career as an elite runner was fleeting. Knee and back injuries forced her to drop out of the trials after two miles.
Talking about it now, she reveals no regret or nostalgia. The great thing about running, she said, is that most people can do it -- even when they are older. It is something you can do even on a first date, like her first date with Derek Wittenberg. They raced in a Road Runners couples event. That was the day, he said, he knew his future wife was a spitfire. It was a two-mile run, and she crushed him.
The two also ran in the Fifth Avenue Mile last month, but their lives are more complicated now. Mary Wittenberg stole away from the event for about 30 minutes to watch their younger son, 9-year-old Cary, play basketball. They returned to the race in time to run the mile. Derek ran a 7:05. Mary finished in 5:59, faster than she had run in years.
Making Changes and Enemies
When Wittenberg arrived at Road Runners, some people in the sport wondered how she would handle the job because she had no background in the business side of sports.
"She was a relatively unknown quantity," said Nick Bitel, the chief executive of the London Marathon. "She came in when New York's position was being threatened by Chicago, which was the up-and-coming race that was getting the better athletes and the better sponsorship money. Everybody was watching her closely to see how she would do."
Before taking over as the chief executive in 2005, Wittenberg said, she worked closely with Steinfeld to broaden the club's vision. Already, the popularity of the marathon was soaring, but the club was not adapting to the changing needs of its new constituents, including baby boomers who had taken up running less to race and more to maintain fitness. Tracy Sundlun, the senior vice president for events for the Competitor Group, which puts on the Rock 'n' Roll Marathon series, said that years ago, marathoners ran 90 miles a week, worked full time and tried to break three hours on courses that closed after four hours.
"Today, you run 20 miles a week, and people think they've changed their life," he said. "These courses are moving restaurants with entertainment directors and more porta-potties than most states. It is a different sport; it is an activity."
To expand Road Runners events, Wittenberg stepped forward to start making changes, she said, on behalf of Steinfeld, who "never had the support he needed." That included helping land the marathon's first title sponsor, the Dutch bank ING.
By the time she replaced Steinfeld, critics were saying she was trampling upon the club's identity.
"She didn't waste any time once Allan left," said Meltzer, the former board member. "She just took over and hired a whole new crew. I was very much against her at this point."
Scott Lange, the club's former marketing chief, said Wittenberg was simply doing what she had to do to match demand. Lange, who left the club in 2000, said Wittenberg should be given credit for the club's recent growth.
Some runners say she should be blamed.
The crowds are what drove Ralph Yozzo, a runner and software programmer who lives in Brooklyn, to compete elsewhere. Yozzo, 49, started running in Road Runners races in the late 1990s. New to the city, he enjoyed the events because they were small enough that he could make friends.
Yozzo noticed a change about 10 years ago after Road Runners started awarding a berth in the marathon to runners who ran nine club races and volunteered to work at a 10th. The policy was a way to reward loyal runners and expand races that had room to grow.
The strategy worked. More than 8,300 runners each year now enter the marathon via this route. But Yozzo and other runners noticed that many races filled up faster and became uncomfortably crowded. Gone was the charm that made Road Runners races so special, he said.
Higher entry fees have also scared away some regulars. The Brooklyn Half Marathon this year went to $45 from $25. The marathon -- which generates about half of Road Runners revenue -- leapt by $60, partly caused by higher fees charged by the New York Police Department for traffic control. The entry fees for the marathon have more than tripled since Wittenberg took over.
"Mary is running the Road Runners like a business and turned everything upside down," said Rick Nealis, the race director of the Marine Corps Marathon in Washington, which costs $92. "But is she just raising the price because she can?"
Nealis questioned how much profit Road Runners was making from each entry -- and whether it was ethical to make that profit for the purposes of the club's larger mission.
"I guess you could say it's ethical until the runners stop coming," he said. "You keep raising the price until you find a breaking point, but I don't think that's what we should be doing to the sport. If Mary was able to promote the sport with TV money or better sponsorships, that's one thing, but I don't think they need to do that on the backs of our runners."
One way Wittenberg is trying promote the sport is through the World Marathon Majors, a group of five marathons that was created to be the running world's equivalent to tennis's Grand Slam.
When she and other race directors formed the group in 2006, she was eager to make changes to the sport to spur its popularity, said Guy Morse, a former Boston Marathon race director. But the group looked at her with some skepticism. Not only was she a newcomer, but she also had a lot to do. Road Runners organizes dozens of races other than the marathon each year, a workload that the other major marathon organizers were not saddled with.
Just listening to her speak -- Wittenberg's mind races so much that she often fails to complete a sentence before starting a new one -- left them marveling at her enthusiasm but feeling bombarded by her litany of ideas.
"She's very good at bringing up new ideas, sometimes ones that aren't feasible or ones that we're not ready for yet," Morse said. "I guess some people can find it irritating, but I think it's better than same old, same old."
One of those ideas was to have the World Marathon Majors organize the world half-marathon championships in the United Arab Emirates. The world championships could then move to different cities each year -- like New York, as part of the New York City Half Marathon, Wittenberg suggested. But her colleagues dismissed the idea.
Unlike Wittenberg, most of them wanted to focus on selling their own events to the public, not selling the sport more broadly, said Glenn Latimer, secretary general of the World Marathon Majors. "Sometimes we just have different goals," he said.
Expanding the Club's Exposure
Wittenberg's efforts to change the sport and Road Runners have paid dividends. The club's revenue grew to $59.3 million in the 2012 fiscal year, a 7.5 percent increase from the previous year and more than double the $28.4 million earned the year Wittenberg took over, largely because of a 30 percent rise in sponsorship revenue and a more than doubling of income from entry fees.
On the other side of the ledger, spending on youth and community programs has nearly quadrupled, to $5.6 million, a point of pride for Wittenberg.
Wittenberg has also made her mark in other ways. To make room for more competitors in the marathon, she instituted the wave system, having runners start at staggered times to ease congestion on the course. She pushed for the women's elites to start first, so they could receive more publicity.
Wittenberg also had a hand in landing a new TV deal. Next month's marathon will be the first New York City Marathon shown live nationally since 1993. The club signed a five-year deal with ESPN2 to broadcast for three and a half hours. The broadcast will be branded "Marathon Morning Across America."
"For us, for me, the board, the staff, it's more about charity reach, more television," she said. "We want the whole nation -- not just New York -- to wake up and tune into marathon morning and say, I've got to run, I've got to be a part of that."
Some current and former sports leaders, including Doug Logan, the former chief executive of USA Track & Field, clearly appreciate her efforts. He said he envisioned Road Runners following the evolution of a sports club like Real Madrid, which started as a membership-driven organization in Spain but now is recognized worldwide.
"The Road Runners have a brand and it makes sense to exploit it," Logan said.
But Wittenberg's seemingly round-the-clock efforts have called attention to her management style.
She can be an engaging leader, but her perfectionism, no matter how well-intentioned, can wear on employees. Two days before a race, she might ask that a finish-line banner be remade in a different color, forcing employees to work late to make expensive changes. Phone calls, e-mails and other correspondence can go days without being answered, and meetings designed to solicit opinions often end with Wittenberg's leaving and making her own decisions later, according to several former employees.
Part of the problem is that Wittenberg tries to do it all and there is no chief operating officer who can make executive decisions in her absence, but instead a coterie of executives with different responsibilities.
Bob Laufer, the general counsel at Road Runners, said a chief operating officer was unnecessary because managers were empowered to make key decisions. Wittenberg, he added, is involved in every significant issue, even those another leader might leave to others.
"I suppose there are things that she doesn't need to look at this or that," he said. "But everything that comes out from the Road Runners, she feels she wants to be the final word on it."
Still, Wittenberg's dominance has prompted questions about what would happen to the organization if she left. She said the club would still thrive because the team beneath her was so strong. Others disagree.
"I think the club is vulnerable," said Vince Chiappetta, an emeritus board member. "My concern is that Mary will burn out."
Wittenberg could leave at any time. Last year, she was a candidate to become the chief executive of USA Track & Field. She decided to stay put because no job could trump her current one, which paid her $500,000 in the year that ended in March 2012, nearly double the $260,000 salary she received when she took over. While her critics contend she is overpaid, Wittenberg's salary has grown at the same pace as Road Runners' expenses, a common benchmark used to gauge executive pay.
Yet no amount of money could lessen the number of duties she must juggle. So Wittenberg recently asked the board of directors for someone to help her with daily tasks so she could focus on more strategic thinking, several board members said.
Michael Capiraso, a 50-year-old consultant who has been handling finance, information technology and human resources for the club, might fill that role. But to keep time with Wittenberg, Capiraso must pick up the pace. Literally. He ran the Fifth Avenue Mile and finished one second behind her. She admitted running fast to try to beat him.
"There isn't a day that goes by where Mary isn't going full speed," he said.
Moving Past the Criticism
Wittenberg's schedule is packed. After watching the professionals run the Fifth Avenue Mile, she joined her sons in the children's race.
She left Fifth Avenue after the very last barricade was hauled onto a truck, finally off to have her first meal since breakfast. She ordered a spinach salad and an edamame salad from a deli, but only picked at them.
There was more to do: Stop by Road Runners' old headquarters, a town house on East 89th Street that was eclipsed by the club's new office near Carnegie Hall, to talk to a reporter. Attend a dinner in Washington Heights for elite runners. Watch her 11-year-old son, Alex, play basketball, her family's second game of the day.
She can seemingly do everything with ease, but the bag-drop fiasco proved that her life does have hiccups.
Darin Soler of Brooklyn wrote on an online petition: "NYRR, bigger is not necessarily better -- don't ruin a great race because you can't handle the growth." Keith Walsh of Brooklyn, on the same petition, wrote that the decision to eliminate the bag drop "makes me wonder how effective the current NYRR leadership staff are ... may be time for a change."
Wittenberg was taken aback by the attacks, according to several people with whom she discussed the issue.
"She said to me, this is awful," said John Korff, the organizer of the New York City Triathlon. "I said, no, you have to view these people's comments as passion. They are as passionate about their precious marathon sweatshirt as they are about the race. You are putting on a wedding, and the bride is passionate about her flowers."
To keep both sides of her life afloat, Wittenberg often cannot stop to take a breath. On the day of the Fifth Avenue Mile, she did not stop moving until about 8 p.m., when she watched Alex's team play basketball at a school off Park Avenue. She wrung her hands as he became upset his team was losing.
"I just wish I could tell him it's going to be O.K.," she said calmly as other parents shouted at the referee or cheered.
Wittenberg knows how kind words can help in a tough situation. Grete Waitz, who won the New York City Marathon a record nine times and died of cancer last year, used to give her encouragement when critics complained about the club's broader mission.
"Grete used to whisper in my ear, 'Fred would like this, keep going in the right direction, keep taking this to more people,' " Wittenberg said.
Wittenberg is doing what she has been told. And, from her perspective at least, the plan is working.
On the day of the Fifth Avenue Mile, she picked up her race number for the next day's 18-miler, a tuneup for the marathon. The volunteer at registration glanced up and asked: "Name? How do you spell that? Uh, and first name?"
In the past, when Road Runners was a small club, everyone would have known her. But now she can blend in with the mass that keeps growing, just another runner.
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