The man who moved the marathon beyond Central Park

Good morning. It is Friday. Today we’re introduced to one of the most important marathon runners that many participants in Sunday’s New York City Marathon have probably never heard of. We’re also getting details on a settlement that will see a $328 million payout for Uber and Lyft drivers.

This is for all runners who have a design in the five boroughs on Sunday. You can thank or curse a man named Ted Corbitt.

Corbitt is credited with moving the New York City Marathon outside of Central Park, where it was run for its first five years. “He organized the five-borough marathon,” Allison Robinson, curator of an exhibit at the New-York Historical Society, told me.

Part of Sunday’s race will follow the Ted Corbitt Loop, a ten-mile circuit he knew well. The The Department of Parks and Recreation named it after him in 2021, 14 years after he died at the age of 88, one of the most important runners that many marathon participants have probably never heard of.

Sportswriter Larry Merchant wrote in the 1990s that there were long-distance runners who mentioned Corbitt’s name “with a reverence that suggested he was a saint, while they were lowly imposters.” He said they would “mumble something about 100-mile races and 24-hour races, and then their voices would fade away as if they weren’t worth being on the same planet with him, let alone on the road.”

At times, Corbitt was the American record holder in the marathon, 100-mile run and the 25, 40 and 50 kilometer events. His fastest time in a marathon was 2 hours 26 minutes and 44 seconds. He would have finished 31st had he set that time in last year’s marathon, organized by the New York Road Runners Club. Guess who the first president was.

A pin he brought home from the 1952 Olympics is on display at the historical society, along with the shoes he wore. “It helps you step back in time and glimpse the details,” Robinson said.

One fact about Corbitt and the Olympics is more than a detail. Corbitt was the first black runner to represent the United States in an Olympic marathon, Robinson said. “By participating, he literally broke racial barriers on a global level in a way that still resonates today,” she said.

The exhibition at the historical society – “Running for Civil Rights: The New York Pioneer Club, 1936-1976” – tells the story not only of Corbitt, but also of Joseph Yancey Jr., co-founder of the New York Pioneer Club, organized in Harlem as an integrated athletics organization. Corbitt was a member of the Pioneer Club before the New York Road Runners group was formed.

“Corbitt was the inside man during the growing boom,” Robert Lipsyte wrote in 1994, “while the more ambitious and outgoing gurus” rallied support and “incited the crowd to run with them.”

But Corbitt ran in the first New York City Marathon in 1970 – wearing bib number No. 1. Of the 55 runners who paid the $1 entry fee, Corbitt wore finished fifth, in 2:44:15. He came in 13 minutes behind the winner, Gary Muhrcke, then a 30-year-old firefighter from New York City who had signed up 15 minutes before the starting gun, unsure if he was in shape to run. Muhrcke had not trained for a few weeks due to a leg injury.

Robinson said Corbitt’s legacy included measuring the park’s trail, the loop now named for Corbitt. She said he had been cycling around the park on a bicycle equipped with a cycle computer, a device that measures the rotations of the wheel to which it was attached.

“This has completely revolutionized the way we measure endurance racing,” said Robinson. “Car odometers are not that accurate. He measured the original New York City Marathon to within a thousandth of a mile. That’s exactly how he got it, and he subsequently published extensively about his technique. It is the basis of how all modern road racing is measured.”

That first race, and the marathons from 1971 to 1975, were held entirely in Central Park. Before 1976 – when the city was struggling after nearly going bankrupt – Corbitt had the idea to bring the race to the rest of the city, perhaps as a five-borough competition among runners. George Spitz “went a step further,” Frank Litsky wrote in The New York Times, proposing a course through all five boroughs. And the race has been running ever since.

As for the exhibition at the Historical Society, Rodnell Workman, senior vice president of New York Road Runnerssaid his group “had a vested interest in making sure the story was told.”

He said someone told him that when Corbitt stopped running races, he started running.

“That told me a lot about Ted,” Workman said. “We talk about the evolution of running, what brings people to the sport and what happens when they can no longer compete. He said, ‘I can still be competitive.’ I was told he ran a few marathons where he had a great pace.”

Weather

Expect a sunny day with temperatures reaching the mid to high 50s. In the evening clouds roll in and temperatures drop to the mid-40s.

ALTERNATE PARKING

In effect until Tuesday (Election Day).

The latest Metro news

Uber and Lyft have agreed to a $328 million payout for drivers.

The two companies reached a settlement after the attorney general investigated a wage theft complaint accusing them of collecting certain taxes and fees from drivers instead of passengers.

Uber will pay $290 million, and Lyft will put $38 million into two funds that will pay claims for which about 100,000 current and former drivers in New York state are eligible to file. My colleagues Ana Ley and Kellen Browning write that the taxi companies have not admitted any wrongdoing in the settlement.

Separately, Gov. Kathy Hochul said Uber would begin making regular payments to the state’s unemployment insurance program as part of a settlement with the New York Labor Department. Uber will also make retroactive payments dating back to 2013. The governor’s office declined to disclose the total amount of that settlement, citing confidentiality laws over unemployment insurance data.

The investigation from Attorney General Letitia James’ office also looked at whether the companies had failed to provide drivers with paid sick leave. Under the scheme, drivers will receive one hour of sick pay for every 30 hours they work, up to a maximum of 56 hours per year. Uber and Lyft also offer drivers the option to request sick leave through their apps.

Additionally, out-of-town drivers are guaranteed a minimum wage of $26 per hour, although that figure only counts the time between a dispatch and the completion of a trip, as opposed to the time spent waiting to connect with a passenger. which would be more lucrative. Drivers in the city already receive a minimum wage under regulations established by the Taxi and Limousine Commission in 2019.

METROPOLITAN diary

Led outside

Dear Diary:

I was sitting in a Broadway theater waiting for the show to start when a couple approached the people in line in front of me.

“I think you two are sitting in our seats,” someone said to the people sitting there.

While they were comparing each other’s cards, a messenger arrived and took a look.