As the sun set over the Williamsburg Bridge on Friday, hundreds of runners of all skill levels gathered to sip beer and don a DIY race bib. One man prepared for takeoff with a laptop strapped to his chest as hordes of e-bikes whizzed past.
The Williamsburg Bridge Marathon isn’t an average running race. It is an unofficial event with no permit and no predetermined distance. Instead, attendees run back and forth on the bridge, a 1.38-mile course, until a computer-generated number between 10 and 40 is posted on the event website. This year, the race was 23.75 miles. The distance was announced at 10:10pm, two hours after the start time, and it attracted about 300 participants.
The race, in its third year, attracted casual runners and ultra-marathon finishers alike, and many found the event through social media. Steve Baiardi, 37, and Lauren Salge, 34, commuted from New Jersey to race.
The pair wore Hawaiian shirts, something Baiardi said is a tradition. Salge has run 30 marathons and a 100-mile race thus far. The two finished the marathon as a relay in 3 hours and 45 minutes, according to their Strava.
Matt White, the organizer of the event, said the race was conceived as a counterpoint to the New York City Marathon. After failing to qualify, White decided he still wanted to run. He threw together a website, attracting a crowd of around 20 runners. Despite a growing number of attendees, the event has not yet faced pushback from law enforcement.
“It was a very on-a-whim thing,” said White, a Williamsburg-based software engineer. “We had gone out for drinks the night before, and I was like, ‘Yeah, I bet I can do it.’ I really liked the idea of continuing to do marathons in progressively worse locations.”
White is full of plans for future races: a 1:00am start time or a 40-plus mile course, for example.
Reviews of the race, as witnessed on a flyer that was posted, include one participating noting "Not finishing this race was a win in itself," and "This is not actually a race– more of a group experience in mutual pain."
Spectator Judy Chen, 28, made her friends Austin Larabee, 26, and Anthony Philando, 25, sign up for a four-person relay after seeing the event posted on TikTok. Though the pair had never run more than seven miles, they were determined to finish. They used a work-issued phone as their relay baton.
Most participants were equally delighted and bemused by the event.
Pabo Zayas, 54, called the event “stupid,” but also a lot of fun. He commuted from western Massachusetts that morning, his second go in the race. Despite an injury, Zayas ran 15 miles that evening.
As in many races, the Williamsburg Bridge Marathon is an exercise in building community– albeit a strange one. As exhausted runners barreled through their last lap, spectators stayed to cheer well past midnight. Music blasted through the course, which was also dotted with pedestrians.
“I like that you can go to the bridge at almost any time of day, and there will almost always be groups of people doing radically different things,” said White. “It is an event that is trying to be exactly what it is, and if you don't like it, that's the point.”
