MLB hosts Lunch & Learn ahead of NYC marathon

NEW YORK -- Ask any runner what the most important part of preparing for a race is, and the answer will be simple: Carb loading. It was upon that premise that Major League Baseball’s Athletes to Executives business resource group (BRG) decided to host a Lunch & Learn seminar with pasta as the featured dish on Friday at the Office of the Commissioner.

For a dozen MLB employees, both present at the Park Avenue office and calling in from Chelsea Market, their upcoming race isn't a leisurely jaunt through Central Park -- it's the iconic New York City Marathon, a 26.2-mile trek through all five boroughs, beginning in Staten Island and finishing in Manhattan, on Sunday.

Robert Field, one of the co-presidents of the BRG and a manager of special events at MLB, came up with the idea a few years ago when training for the NYC half marathon. He was alone, and he noticed how many groups were running together. Knowing how many of his colleagues were avid about fitness, he approached the BRG’s executive board about creating a club for employees to run together.

“If you run together, you meet people you don’t even work with professionally on the business side,” Field said. “You have camaraderie within the company, and [you] bring people together.”

Thus, the baserunning club was born. The NYC Marathon will be its biggest event to date, and several of the employees will be running a race of that magnitude for the first time. The significance wasn’t lost on Field, who opened the seminar.

“This time last year, I posed a question: ‘When was the last time you did something for the first time?’ Field said. “… If you really think about it, when you get older, those opportunities don’t come as easily as you think they do. When you’re younger, when you’re growing up, you do things for the first time quite often. As you get older, work happens, life happens, and you get into this routine of doing the same thing over and over again and you don’t really get a chance to do something for the first time.”

That’s why he and the BRG invited Team in Training, a group that takes on endurance challenges worldwide while raising money for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society in the fight against cancer, to discuss their background as experienced endurance athletes, explore motivational tools for marathon running and provide tips for how to be ready on race day.

“[We] create a space where like-minded individuals can coalesce around something bigger than themselves,” said Ryan Hatcher, vice president at The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. “That’s what we’re about -- training together with not just the finish line of the race in mind, but the finish line for cancer as well.”

Zakia Haywood, a campaign manager for Team in Training, and Steve Mitchell, its head running coach as well as a director of programming at The Foundry powered by Finish Line Physical Therapy, shared their expertise as Marc Beck, part of the BRG’s steering committee and a director of market research at MLB, moderated the conversation, calling Marathon Sunday “the happiest day of the year in New York.”

As for their biggest pieces of advice, Mitchell assured the employees that while running a marathon is “maybe the single biggest solo achievement they’ll have in their lives,” as Beck put it, they aren’t alone on the course.

“The running community is very different than other sports in the athletic world,” Mitchell said. “From the top down, it really is such a community, and everybody is supportive, even runners who are running competitively against each other.”

But as Haywood emphasized, at the same time, it’s essential for each runner to make the race personal.

“Always remember your 'why?' Why are you out there in the first place? There has to be a reason,” Haywood said. “You’re not just going to run a marathon for the sake of it, though some people do that. For me, it’s about having the races in memory of someone or in honor of someone. [That way] you have a mission, and you make those miles as meaningful as possible.”

Knowing how special an experience the NYC Marathon is, Field wanted to ensure that Friday’s seminar prepared his fellow employees for the race of their lives. Come Sunday, it will be a shared experience.

“The atmosphere itself is like going to the All-Star Game or the Home Run Derby, especially on First Avenue,” Field said. “You see all the runners come up and thousands and thousands of people are lined up cheering. … There are people from all over the world who come here. It’s a huge event for us. People make a day out of it. Restaurants get involved. People tailgate. It’s like the runners’ Super Bowl.”