“No stairs. Stairs are your worst enemy after running a marathon,” 44-year-old Headley Duncan said the day after running the New York City Marathon.
Headley celebrated his 26.2-mile trek at the second annual Bronx Medal Monday at the Bronx Brewery, a free event for marathoners looking to celebrate their achievement.
Every year, people from all over the world flock to the Big Apple to run the New York City Marathon, the largest in the world. The marathon winds through all five boroughs, and this year, 594 Bronxites finished the race.
After runners cross the finish line and collect their medals, the post-race festivities the week after the race are most often held in Manhattan, leaving those in the outer boroughs to either travel on tired legs or not celebrate.
That is, until Bronx native and runner Duncan, an Eastchester local and member of the Pints and Pavements Run Club, enjoyed a post-marathon festival in Harlem after his first New York City marathon in 2022, and mentioned the idea of hosting a Bronx party for the uptown runners.
Bronx Medal Monday’s first year in 2023 drew 250 runners. On Monday, Nov. 4, Bronx Medal Monday returned with over 400 other marathoners, friends, and family enjoying an epic uptown celebration.
Runners danced, mingled, and snapped selfies together with their medals in the tap room at Bronx Brewery. The first 100 runners were given gift bags of coconut water, dark chocolate and peanut butter from FreshDirect.
A garland of hanging singlets and run club shirts from crews across the Bronx – including the Boogie Down Bronx Runners, the Bronx Nomads and Bronx Sole–hung above the brewery’s tap room, a tapestry of running tales.
33-year-old Boogie Down Bronx Runner and 2024 NYC marathoner Yamir Adames said that Bronx Medal Monday was “amazing.”
“It also sheds a light on a community that’s very much underrepresented, and the things that these guys here are doing is for the community,” Adames said.
Runners were treated to free, medal engraving, massage treatments and recovery boots, to help post-marathon legs heal. Runners could get professional portraits taken with their medals by photographer Alex Rivera. The Bronx Medal Monday committee raised money on GoFundMe to cover the costs of the services at the party.
Runners could also enter a raffle to win prizes that included gift cards to Fleet Feet, a running store in the city and a Nathan running hydration vest.
As the party got underway, attendees danced to the sounds from DJ Select, a Highbridge resident and runner. Gold and black star balloons floated in every corner of the party, and giant “BX” black bubble balloons floated in the middle.
The festivities attracted runners from uptown – and even out of town. Matthew Carnegie, the founder of Dubset Running Collective in White Plains joined the celebration along with fellow Dubset Running Collective members. While Carnegie and crew are from out of the city, he feels the connection with the run club in the Bronx.
“It feels really great,” Carnegie said. “I don’t have to travel with these weak legs. I can commute to something closer. It’s meaningful. I run with a lot of these crews here, and I don’t really run with a lot of crews in Central Park. So to be able to have this and have this community more upstate is like a real, real great thing.”
As runners filled the brewery, their necks glistening with their new marathon medal, Duncan, wearing his own medal, high-fived and welcomed each runner.
“We’re just appreciative of everybody that ran the marathon,” he said. “This event is a love letter to the people who ran the marathon, and their families and their supporters, because it takes so much out of you to prepare to run a marathon. This is our way of saying, thank you. We love you. We appreciate you.”
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