Wings for Life World Run (2024 New York City edition): race review
I took part in the world’s largest running event. There were about 140 other runners present. Let me explain. Plus: Throwback to the Manhattan VFR corridor.
The traditional race formula is that you have a fixed distance, and the person who runs it the fastest wins. But imagine an event where instead of racing toward a finish line, you race to stay ahead of someone — or something — trying to catch you from behind. The faster you run, the longer you stay in the race and the more miles you cover. Last person to get caught wins. That is the formula used in the Wings for Life World Run.
Brought to you by Red Bull
The Wings for Life World Run is an event organized by a charitable foundation whose goal is to find a cure for spinal cord injuries and paraplegia. It takes place every year on the first Sunday in May. The force behind it is Red Bull, the privately held Austrian company that dominates the global energy drink market and is also the owner of Formula One and soccer teams in the U.S. and Europe. Red Bull is the third most valuable brand in the soft drinks market after Coca Cola and Pepsi.
All costs of the Wings for Life World Run are underwritten by Red Bull, so 100 percent of money raised through races entries, donations, and sponsorship goes to the charity. The slogan of the race is “running for those who can’t.” It’s quite an effective phrase, despite — or, maybe, because of — its focus on a negative.
A race run all over the place
Wings for Life claims to be the largest running event in the world. The organizers say that this year, around 265,817 people took part. However, that appears to be the number who signed up — which, I guess, is a form of participation in what is a fundraising event. But the official 2024 results show that a little under 174,000 actually ran on the day. Still, that is easily enough to make this the biggest running event in the world.
That said, not all participants congregate in one place. You can take part literally anywhere on the planet with an Internet connection.
But this is not a completely virtual race, where everyone runs on their own, as people did during the pandemic when mass gatherings weren’t possible and race organizers wanted to offer what they could. There are a number of “Flagship” events where thousands of runners take to the streets together and are pursued by a real-life “catcher car.” The car starts 30 minutes after the runners at a speed of around 8.5 miles per hour and slowly gets a bit faster at a predetermined rate. Once it catches up with you, you’re done. This year, there were seven of these Flagship events, all in Europe. The one in Vienna alone had almost 12,000 runners taking part, and Munich almost as many.
If you aren’t able to take part in a Flagship event, then you run with a phone app. It’s a cleverly designed system, where the app tracks your speed using GPS and has a “virtual” catcher car following and eventually catching up with you the way a real car would at a Flagship race. So you need to run with your phone and headphones. While running with the app, you hear a variety of motivational content, including warnings from the “driver” of the virtual catcher car as it draws closer.
You can do an app run on your own anywhere in the world. However, running with the app need not be a solo activity. This is because there are hundreds of group app runs organized throughout the world where people take part together. These can range from very small groups with, perhaps, no more than a dozen people, to ones with several hundred. In some local app events — and I believe all the Flagship ones — people in wheelchairs also take part.
You can register for the group location of your choice through the app. The courses are typically either short loops or out-and-backs of a couple of miles or so — and so you repeat the course until the virtual car catches up. You can sign up for a group run on the same app you use to run the race. And you can do so at any time before the race and switch at will from one location to another or between solo and group runs. While most of the Flagship events sell out, I doubt there is — at least as a practical matter — any real capacity limit on the group app runs.
The other key point about the Wings for Life World Run is that wherever and however you run — whether it be on your own, in a group app run, or at a Flagship event — you start at the same time. And that is 1 P.M. Central European Time. This can pose some interesting challenges. For example, if you want to run the race in my home state of California, it means a 4 A.M. start local time. But as inconvenient as the simultaneous start time might be in some time zones, the benefit is that it helps foster a sense of being part of a big event.
Picking my race location
I hadn’t heard of the Wings for Life run until this year when my son, a college student, told me about it. He is working part time for Red Bull as part of a South Florida team whose focus is on-the-ground marketing, including at events and college campuses. He was working on race day, but encouraged me to take part.
I toyed briefly with the idea of doing a Flagship run in Europe. But most were already sold out and, besides, I was doing a 10K in Paris later in the month. So I decided to go with a group app run in the U.S.
The nearest group app run to me was in Santa Monica, one of the tonier parts of Los Angeles about 100 miles south of where I live. There, the course ran from Red Bull’s U.S. corporate headquarters to the pier and back. But that location didn’t seem ideal. I wasn’t thrilled at the idea of a 4 A.M. start. It wasn’t the issue of getting up early, something I’m fine with, but running through the city in the dark. Also, when I looked into it about a month before the event, there weren’t much more than 100 people signed up for that location. Besides, I’m running a big 10K in Santa Monica later this year.
So I thought I’d venture further afield. Specifically, to the east to allow for a daylight run. I ended up picking New York City. I chose it in part because it seemed to be the largest event I could find. And New York is not a random place for me. It was my landing point on my first ever visit to North America in the early eighties. I flew in from London on a TWA Boeing 747 and was astonished that the captain made jokes over the public address system, something that would never — at least back then — happen on European carriers. I later lived in Manhattan on and off in the late eighties and early nineties. And I got married there in 1992 (with the reception in the Rainbow Room at the top of Rockefeller Center). My wife grew up in New York, although that’s not where we met.
This was to be my second New York City race. In 2018, I ran the New York Half Marathon, with its spectacular course starting in Brooklyn and ending in Central Park. I rate that as among my top-10 races in terms of the course, my performance, and the overall experience.
When I signed up for the New York City Wings for Life event, around 400 others had already done so. That number later climbed as race day approached. However, as detailed later, the actual number of runners on the day was much fewer.
Registration and cost
You can sign up to run Wings for Life on the app or on their website. The cost to do an app run — either solo or at a group event — is just $28. Every bit of that goes to the charitable foundation. That is quite a bargain, since you also get a code to order an Adidas Wings for Life race shirt at no extra cost. A performance shirt of this quality could easily cost $28 on its own. I’m not sure how it works in other countries, but in the U.S. you ordered from Adidas direct with free FedEx shipping. You couldn’t pick up the shirt at the race itself.
There’s also a way to fundraise through the app, by getting people to sponsor you for every mile you complete (with caps if they are afraid you might run too far).
Once registered, you can use the app for training runs with the virtual catcher car in pursuit. I’m not sure there’s much purpose in using it multiple times, but I found it helpful to try it out to make sure I’d be familiar with how it works on race day. With training runs — unlike the race-day run — you control the start time by pressing a button and can also choose how long before the virtual catcher car will start moving.
The New York course
I non-revved to New York on Alaska Airlines the day before the race. I arrived in time to check out the start location and the course. And with time for an arrival visit to the Alaska Lounge at JFK — the only one of that airline’s very nice lounges I had yet to visit.
The New York Wings for Life course is along part of the Hudson River Park, a narrow park that stretches along much of the west side of Manhattan from lower to midtown. It’s the closest bit of land the passengers sitting on the left-hand side of Captain Sully’s plane would have seen if they looked out their window after his celebrated landing on the Hudson River. The park is quite varied and passes by numerous piers. Runners share a multi-use track with bikes and walkers. It’s really an ideal location for a Manhattan run.
The course begins at Pier 84 — more or less abeam West 43rd Street, if you are familiar with Manhattan — and heads to Pier 62 about 1.2 miles to the south where runners turn around.
Aviation throwback: the Manhattan VFR corridor
Walking the course the day before the race, and looking at the Hudson River and the helicopter traffic along it, I recalled the days in the early 1990’s when I flew our Cessna 172 in a loop around Manhattan. We kept the plane for a while at the Westchester County Airport, just south of the Connecticut border. And in those days, you could fly down from there along the Hudson River, then past the Statue of Liberty, before looping northward up the East River back toward Westchester via the Long Island Sound.
It was largely uncontrolled airspace at the altitude we flew. There was a Visual Flight Rules (VFR) corridor, a narrow airway limited by a ceiling of 1,100 feet, except you did have to check in with Kennedy Tower at one point on the East River. While my wife is the professional pilot in our family, and I was only a licensed amateur, I did fly the Manhattan circle as the only pilot on board at least once. It’s not something I could quite imagine myself doing today. But back in those days, I could not have imagined myself running half marathons. So life takes its twists and turns.
I’m not sure how possible it is to fly the Manhattan circle these days. A combination of 9-11 and a midair between a helicopter and a fixed wing aircraft in 2009 — as well as some near misses — resulted in this airspace now being much more tightly controlled and restricted than in the days when one could just fly the route on a whim.
The race day experience
I got to Pier 84 on race morning at around 6:30 A.M., a half hour before the start. Normally, I don’t run in the race shirts for a particular event. But I made an exception here, since I figured that with a small event sharing a track with other people, the Wings for Life shirt would enhance a spirit of community. Most other participants also wore theirs.
There weren’t many people there when I arrived, but there was a table set up where you collected a bib with your name and race number. There were also cans of Red Bull on offer and a large keg of water. While at a global level, the race is professionally arranged, the local group runs are generally the work of volunteers who make them happen. I think some in New York were Red Bull employees.
With a race like this with no timing chip and everything coming from the app, the bib is of little practical purpose, but it somehow reinforces the feeling of being in a race. This was the first race bib I have come across where you peel off a backing so that it just sticks onto the shirt. It’s a great idea and much better than the usual safety-pin system. I imagine it would be a bit more complicated to design if the back of the bib also had to house a timing chip. But it shouldn’t be impossible, so I would like to think “sticky” is the future of bibs.
Runners picking up their bibs were also asked to sign a paper waiver in addition to the electronic one they agreed to when registering. No doubt that was necessary — including to protect the local organizers — but it required a lot of filling out tedious details and led to a long line developing as more runners appeared. I started to wonder whether the line would clear before the race started, and I’m not sure it really did. But there was nothing to stop runners from abandoning the paperwork and taking off.
There was an inflatable arch to mark the start line. But there was no real ceremony at the start, other than via the app. There were no local announcements of any type. Rather, everyone was tuned into the audio on the app, which had a motivational build-up in the 15 minutes or so leading to start time. And when the app announced the race was started, everyone just began to run. You didn’t have to press “start” — if the app is launched, it starts tracking you at the precise moment the worldwide race begins. If you don’t run right away, you lose time to build up distance from the catcher.
There was a hydration station at the turnaround point, and at least one course marshal on the way at a fork where there could be some confusion as to which path to take. There were also race photographers. However, photographs weren’t offered for sale, and I couldn’t find any from the New York event on the Wings for Life website after the race.
The official results showed that the number of runners who took part in the New York event was just 142. So most people who signed up did not show up. Maybe that’s what happens when a race is quite inexpensive and you then get sent the free shirt ahead of time. Perhaps people aren’t as vested as they would be if they paid over $100 and then had be there for the shirt. Or maybe there are some people who are just happy to donate to the cause but never fully intended to run.
Another possibility is to do with the final course differing from what was originally shown on the app. When I registered, the course was shown as starting around Pier 57 and headed northward. The new location was announced in an email sent to registered New York runners in the week before the race, but without any acknowledgement there had been a change. Although the app itself showed the new location by race day, I wondered whether some runners might not have got the memo and shown up at the wrong pier. I did not realize it had changed until the day before the race when I went to check out the course. Had I not done my eve-of-race reconnaissance, I might have gone to the wrong place.
I did notice that the turnout rate at the Santa Monica event was higher. Although there were fewer runners than in New York, the proportion of no-shows was much less. Maybe that’s because it draws runners who work in the Red Bull U.S. headquarters where that course starts.
But while the New York event was smaller than I had expected, it had an upbeat and friendly vibe. I was happy to be there.
The inverted dynamic
The race organizers emphasize that Wings for Life is all about distance, not speed, per se. They say on the website: “Your result is not how quickly you run, but the distance you cover.” But while that is technically true, how quickly you run does dictate how much distance you cover. So although the result is expressed differently, this is still, ultimately, a race about speed.
However, the “catcher car” system means that the overall dynamic of a race is inverted. In a conventional race, the fastest runners are on the course for the least amount of time. Speedy runners will be smugly taking showers while others are still huffing and puffing toward the finish line. With this run, the opposite is the case. The faster you run, the longer you run — because you’re keeping a greater distance from the catcher car. And with the way the physics and numbers work out, the outcome is not linear but more exponential — if one runner is 10 percent faster than another, he or she will actually run a distance somewhat more than 10 percent longer. I found my head spinning a bit when trying to compute the mathematics of it all. But the app does have a tool that predicts how long the car will take to catch you if you run at various paces.
The fastest global runner in 2024 — a 30-year-old in Japan — covered over 43 miles. To do that, he must have run at a pace of around five minutes per mile according to the calculator tool on the app. The fastest runner at a Flagship event was a 25-year-old in Vienna who covered about 42 miles.
At the roughly 9:30 pace I was managing in half marathons last year, I would have covered a bit over 10 miles. But I went into the race with low expectations about how long I would stay ahead of the catcher car. My times overall are well down compared with a year ago, for reasons that may have something to do with two bouts of Covid and a two-month running hiatus due to an injury. Hopefully not also to do with age, but you never know. So I managed just under 6.4 miles before the catcher caught up with me after I had been running for about one hour and 12 minutes. So almost a quarter marathon. Still, that placed me 376 out of 965 in my Division worldwide (male 65-69). And second in my Division in New York City (although, in the interests of full transparency, there were only two of us!).
Comparing my time with that of the fastest runner illustrates the exponential mathematics of this race: the fastest runner — the guy in Japan — ran a little over twice as fast as me, but, by being able to stay ahead of the catcher car for much longer, was able to cover over six times as much ground. In a conventional race, by contrast, my metric — time to the finish line — would be half as good that of someone twice as fast as me.
So although this race tries to stress inclusiveness for all abilities, one could argue that the emphasized metrics accentuate the gap between the truly fast and the mere recreational weekend warriors.
The finish is where you’re caught
When you get caught, your race is over. There is obviously nothing to stop you running back to where you started if you want — but it’s not going to change your result. I was pretty close to the start line when I was caught, and I then walked there to see whether anything was happening. But there was really no finish line action there, because the finish is different for every runner. And if you finish well away from the start location, you could just call it a day and head home from wherever you are.
I imagine that is the case with the Flagship events, too. I suppose that’s one downside of this race format — no finish line festivity if everyone just peels away at the point of being caught. But I’m not one to linger much at finish lines, so it didn’t bother me.
Consistent with the absence of a conventional finish line, there were no medals. At least, I don’t think there were, unless I somehow missed them. I did later notice some photographs on the race website of runners somewhere in the world who did get medals, but that may have been a local thing.
Runners at the New York event were invited to congregate after the race at an Italian restaurant with a brunch menu. But with an uncertain day of traveling standby back to California, I headed off to the airport after showering at my hotel. However, with time for a stop at one of United’s impressive revamped Newark lounges.
Conclusion
However or wherever you run it, the Wings for Life World Run is a unique race for a great cause. And it is also priced very affordably compared with conventional races — plus every penny you pay goes to the charity. While the group app runs are generally quite small events, you still get to be part of something much bigger. Having got a flavor of the event, I am tempted to do one of the Flagship races in Europe next year. ✈️ 🏃
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