Run their route

We New Yorkers have our routines. Same daily route, same bodega, same train, same shoes you keep meaning to replace. For the city’s marathoners, though, the routine just adds a few more miles (a lot more, honestly) and a deeper relationship with whatever stretch of pavement they’ve claimed as their own.

Ahead of race day in November, we caught up with three New Yorkers training in Skechers AERO Razor (we’ll find out more about the AERO Boost as training moves along) to talk about routes and rituals. They live in different neighborhoods, run at different paces and arrived at 26.2 by very different paths. What they share is a clear-eyed take on what the work needs to include to cross the finish line.

Marathon training comes with a lot of variables: pace, mileage, fuel, sleep, weather, the route… The shoe is the one most runners stop being casual about. It does the work for hundreds of miles before it ever crosses a start line. All three of our runners settled on the same one: Skechers AERO.

Jerry Francois, Brooklyn — AERO Razor

Jerry Francois has run thirteen marathons. Or fourteen. He keeps losing track. “I always forget the count,” he says. “It feels like my life is a marathon. Physically, mentally, spiritually.”

A Brooklyn native, full-time running coach and father to a nearly six-year-old who has already logged his first three-miler, Francois started running at seventeen, the year he lost his mother. He calls running the thing that found him at the moment he most needed to be found. He’s also frank about the math of the distance itself. “I don’t love the marathon. I respect the marathon.” Proof? He swears off the next one every time. Two days later, he’s signed up again.

“I don’t love the marathon. I respect the marathon.”

His route begins at the Q train stop across from Prospect Park, where someone is usually feeding pigeons, and his son, when along for the warm-up, likes to run straight through the flock. Inside the park, a particular pond marks the moment Francois stops to look up. “I take a second to be grateful,” he says. “Look where we are. Look where we came from.” Post-run, when he isn’t heading straight home, he stops at Brooklyn Perk, the local coffee chain where he’s hosted runs with his own club.

Between coaching and his own training, his weekly mileage runs high. He’s putting those miles on the AERO Razor. “It’s the only shoe that gets me through the challenges of running.”

Ayaka Guido, Cobble Hill — AERO Razor

Ayaka Guido and her husband had been watching the marathon together for years, saying they’d run it ‘one day.’ Well, that ‘one day’ turned out to be a random night with a glass of champagne. “It was champagne and the fact that there was a lottery opening,” she says. “I signed up, and for some odd reason, I was one of the three percent who got in. I didn’t realize how crazy that was.”

Guido, the executive chef at ABC Kitchen in Dumbo, is a former military kid who found her way to New York via the Culinary Institute of America. That first champagne-induced marathon, she admits, she didn’t really train for. “When you count to 13, you’re like, that’s fast,” she says. “But then you’re in it, and it’s never-ending.” By the half-mark, she called her husband mid-race to ask whether “13” meant one more mile or two.

Year three is very different, though, including the addition of a handful of her cooks who have swapped late nights for early miles. “We’re going to go run together instead and then go to the farmers market.”

“When you count to 13, you’re like, that’s fast. But then you’re in it, and it’s never-ending.”

Her route starts at the Atlantic Avenue corner where she decides whether to run toward Red Hook or the piers. Both edges of the borough offer what she calls an “epic” view of the city. If she turns left, she usually finishes at the restaurant, which doubles as a fairly motivating finish line. This fall she’s also running a race in Sydney, which she has framed, generously, as a “bonus vacation.”

After two marathons, she has a better sense of what works, including the colors for the AERO Burst. “They look great. I’m excited to put some miles on them.”

Alexis Kelly, Park Slope — AERO Razor

Alexis Kelly moved across the street from Prospect Park five years ago and was, almost immediately, running it. “I was just looking for a new hobby,” she says. “Prospect Park was essentially my training ground for my first half. It’s like my home base.”

This will be her first full marathon, a goal she earned the long way: nine qualifying races and a volunteer shift across the previous year, plus a stretch of physical therapy after a foot injury at the Bronx 10 Mile. Her target is sub-four hours. Her motivation, she says, is mostly internal. “I’m healthy and I’m young and I want to prove to myself that I can do it.” She’s been watching the race from the sidelines for years. This year she’s on the other side of the barricade.

“I’m healthy and I’m young and I want to prove to myself that I can do it.”

Her route starts at the park’s south entrance, the closest gate to her apartment, and includes a stretch of big trees and open dog-field grass where she does her speedwork. On Saturdays, she ends at Grand Army Plaza for the farmers market: “always music, everyone’s running, the energy is amazing.”

Her training block officially begins this month, and the miles are climbing. She’s putting them on the AERO Razor. “I wore the Razor for the first time today, and they did not disappoint. I already know they’ll be my go-to for shorter distances and speed runs, and the perfect addition to my marathon training.”

The miles ahead

Three runners, three routes, the same long autumn ahead. Between now and November, the workouts get longer and the pace gets sharper. The small rituals start carrying more weight: the hallway warm-up, the turn at the corner, the same loop through the park.

Running, though, looks different on every runner, so we’ll be checking back in with all three closer to race day to see how the training has gone, what they’ve changed and what they’re carrying to the start line. The Skechers AERO Series is designed for exactly this; giving comfort, support and performance that keep runners at every level moving forward and enjoying the journey while they’re at it.

Production

Photographer: Paul Quitoriano
Assistant Photographer: Sarah Hinzman
Wardrobe: Skechers
Concept: Jennifer Picht
Creative Director: Michael Stickle
Producer: Courtney Calliste
Creative Solutions: Briana Cammarata, Matthew Asenjo, Kennedy Rutledge

Skechers AERO Burst® and Skechers AERO Razor™ are trademarks of Skechers U.S.A., Inc.