Rain Doesn’t Dampen Spirits of Fred Lebow Half-Marathoners

Congratulations. You just ran a half-marathon. In January. In New York City. And in terrible weather conditions. For that accomplishment, you deserve something special...like a medal! But have you ever thought about what goes into a medal? How it goes from the conception phase to hanging around your neck at the end of a race?

Hopefully you’ve changed into some warm, dry clothes following this morning’s race in the rain. And if possible, we recommend you grab a cup of something warm, settle in, and learn more about how the 2019 Fred Lebow Half-Marathon medal came to be.

Please scroll down the article for medal engraving information

The brainchild of NYRR’s Creative Services team, which falls within the organization’s Brand Marketing and Communications division, the medal’s design was extremely popular among runners this year.

The design was led by Rachel Isaac, assistant manager, creative services, who explained that “the first part of the process was leveraging the race’s history to come up with a fresh, innovative design.”

“The Fred Lebow Half-Marathon is one of our races where we try to celebrate the history of the people who have had a lasting impact on NYRR and their contributions to the running community,” she said.

For those who are unaware, Lebow co-founded the New York City Marathon in 1970. He became president of NYRR in 1972 and served in that role and as race director of the New York City Marathon for 22 years, until his untimely death from brain cancer in 1994.

Oh—and while running through Central Park, you may have seen his statue, which is located at Engineers’ Gate on the east side of the park.

Back in 2016, NYRR introduced a medal for the race—an added treat for those running 13.1 miles in tough January conditions. After settling on using Fred’s iconic image as the design for the piece of bling, a snowstorm led to the cancellation of the race and runners never got to earn their “Fred head” medal.

As a result, the medal design was replicated in 2017. It was then tweaked somewhat in 2018.

“Fred’s iconic look is one our runners easily identify with,” added Isaac. “We started off with a cutout of Fred’s head with his mustache and hat and we’ve kept that design for a few years because it was very popular and different from our other medals.”

For this year’s race, the team experimented with different styles, including different shapes and cutouts, before landing on the stopwatch design. Why a stopwatch, you ask?

Well, as race director of the New York City Marathon, Lebow kept more than a watchful eye on time (see his statue at Engineers’ Gate).

Functional Medal

But it’s one thing to have an amazing idea and design. The hard part is making it functional.

“Sometimes the ribbon needs to be wider to hold it,” Isaac explained. “When part of the medal sticks out, such as the stopwatch elements on this medal, you need good support from manufacturer as we don’t want the medal to break.”

Another obstacle in medal design is that they need to have an area on the back for engraving purposes. That piece of real estate also needs to accommodate long names.

“When we got the prototype, that’s when we got excited about it,” Isaac said, “as it was both functional and the design worked.”

“The shape and weight of the analog stopwatch felt great in our hands, and hung around our necks like a stopwatch lanyard,” added Mary Beth Kilkelly, NYRR’s director, creative and marketing services. “NYRR’s design process is focused on the runners’ experience, and in this case we were excited to deliver a visceral touchpoint to the race.”

A Hit with Runners

The result was a hit—with the medal preview garnering more than 16,000 views on Instagram in the weeks leading up to the race. And for the 3,725 finishers at the Fred Lebow Half-Marathon, the response was overwhelmingly positive.

“One of our aims is how do we educate and inspire (and maybe even surprise) our runners through design?” Isaac said. “We wanted to keep things fresh, especially you’ve ran this race for the past number of years, and I think we’ve done that.”