Work
Here are a few highlights from my work, including social media and web projects.
Hudson River Park
These posts feature my photography. Events covered include the Pier 26 Science Playground Opening, Pumpkin Smash, and the Gansevoort Peninsula Dog Park Opening.
Transportation Alternatives
These posts include copy I wrote to support Transportation Alternatives campaigns. Graphics were provided by TA's design team.
New York Road Runners
Live Event Coverage
I shot all of the photos used in these posts, and I wrote the copy for nearly all of them as well.
and later, I used the "outtakes" to made an animation:
Runfographics
"Visual fun facts" about different NYRR races; I came up with the topic ideas and did the research to find out the data (ex. how many Jerrys are entered in the Marathon this year? and Georges, and Elaines, etc.)
Sort of like what Spotify used to do, where they'd take data and write ads about people who listened to a song 500 times that year or something like that.
New Balance Bronx 10 Mile
New York City Marathon
Brooklyn Half
[this is where I would put the one from when the race was on the same day as the Royal Wedding (2018?) and I counted how many people were entered in the race named Harry, Meghan, William, Kate, George, and Charlotte, but it's buried somewhere in Instagram's archives]
Misc. Other Social Media Projects
I got to make a video with talking dogs, and a post about Sesame Street, so those were both pretty neat.
For the dog video, I storyboarded it and wrote the script.
For the Sesame Street post, I looked up when the episode of Snuffy and Gordon running the Marathon aired, watched it at work (...for research purposes), and Photoshopped an NYRR Results page to look like they had been listed in the official results.
From the @tcsnycmarathon Instagram Stories during the 2020 Virtual TCS New York City Marathon--I was responsible for social media coverage on Halloween, so I figured I'd throw this in to it.
(The poll leaned heavily in favor of thumbs-down, but I disagree with the crowd.)
Blog Posts
Breaking out into that longer-form content now, here are links and short summaries to blog posts I've written.
Pre-Race Promotion
5 Ways to Get Down 5th Avenue
To promote the 5th Avenue Mile, I tried out five different ways to get from the start line at 80th Street to the finish line at 60th Street (bus, taxi, subway, bike, and run), using Snapchat Spectacles to record each attempt.
An Almost-Alphabetical Guide to Ocean Parkway for the Popular® Brooklyn Half
Running down Ocean Parkway from Prospect Park to Coney Island feels really long, so I gave runners a different thing to think about each block as they ran from Avenue C to Avenue Z.
The '70s, '80s, '90s, and Today: Comparing Eras of the New York City Marathon
For the 50th running of the New York City Marathon, I researched and compared different parts of life from 1970, 1980, 1990, 2000, 2010, and 2021.
Similar to the work for Runfographics, I looked up things like the price of a subway ride, the marathon world record at the time, and the Billboard #1 song on race day that year, and then built a table in HTML and CSS to show them side-by-side across each decade.
13 Things You'll See at the United Airlines NYC Half
Ultimately, people didn't see these things, because the race ended up getting canceled, but here was a try at teaching people about the places around the most recent NYC Half course. (Note: I did not shoot the photos used in this post.)
How to Get to Newport for the NYRR Newport Fiesta 5K
I'm from New Jersey, and I've spent a lot of time in Jersey City, so I wrote a logistical guide to getting there for the out-of-towners, the "B&T crowd" from New York.
Post-Race Reports
How a Performance Waist Pack Started an Exploration Into Minimalism at the NYRR Al Gordon Brooklyn 4M—And Sparked Joy!
Jumping on the minimalism bandwagon (what a 2019 move), I attempted to fit everything I needed for a race into the race's souvenir waist pack/fanny pack.
I Ran the NYRR Midnight Run and Now I Feel Good About 2019
My friend and I set a new year's resolution to "make 2019 our year." Man am I glad I didn't write this post at the start of 2020.
Connecting the Past to the Present at the NYRR Ted Corbitt 15K
Covered a panel event about NYRR's history leading up to a race and used it for a recap post from the race that weekend.
2020 Virtual TCS New York City Marathon Daily Recap
With a 17-day Virtual Marathon taking the place of the in-person race in 2020, I followed the virtual race leaderboard and wrote a short summary of each day's updates to the top-10 standings.
Youth Programs
It's National Pizza Day! Help Our Rising New York Road Runners Celebrate
Connecting the blog to a youth virtual activity where they would celebrate a different holiday each day, I wrote a blog post that crowdsourced recommendations for where they should celebrate National Pizza Day and placed the recommendations into a Google Map (complete with pizza icons to show the locations!).
When Suri Met Jenny: A Q&A
To promote our youth programs, I wrote questions/topics for this interview and edited the video using Premiere.
Jenny Simpson Joins Rising New York Road Runners on the Sesame Street Road Trip
Another article promoting our youth programs--this time at an event with Sesame Street characters.
Misc. Other Content Ideas
2020 NYRR Holiday Gift Guide
I re-created the graphic design used in an NYRR newsletter e-mail and made it mobile-responsive using HTML and CSS, while also creating anchor links from each product image to quickly bring the user to that product's description lower on the page.
Surely It Wouldn't Rain in Boston Again...Right?
I ran the Boston Marathon in 2018 and boy did it rain that day. So when I came back the next year, hoping I'd get a normal weather day, and saw rain potentially in the forecast again, somehow I was allowed to write a blog post about it.
The NYRR Holiday Cookie Swap: A Recap
Doing what I do best--reviewing cookies.
You May Remember Them from Such NYRR Races As...
To showcase the local runners competing in the 2020 Olympic Trials Marathon, I made one big Troy McClure reference.
Things That Didn't Make the Cut
To wrap things up, here are some ideas and images that never made it onto the internet/social media, but are worth sharing anyway.
A promotional image for the 2020 Midnight Run
Get it? 2020 vision?
Boy did that year turn out differently that we expected, huh?
A GIF to promote the New Balance 5th Avenue Mile collection
There were going to be versions for each borough to match the design on the singlet (like the Queens one would have had the Unisphere)
A race bib for the "Shrimp Scamper"
A brainstorm for food-themed races (like Pizza Run, Donut Dash, etc.) led to this. I'm still holding out for a mid-race aid station offering water, energy gels, and shrimp scampi.
A "Mini-Planet" version of a photo from the Brooklyn Half
I'm not sure what we would've said in the copy to connect to the image, but it looks kinda neat
virtual desert 5k_women_6.mp4An animation to illustrate a virtual 5K race
It might've been for the Global Running Day 5K?
Either way, this was to show how a race would have looked, or would have played out, if all three professional runners had been racing in the same place at the same time; it's more of a proof-of-concept for if we had expanded virtual race coverage more.
This one was set in a desert (as opposed to NYC) because I believe the three athletes we were going to highlight had been training in Arizona, but we would have modified the backgrounds to different settings (city, park, track, etc.).