Running’s changed. It’s no longer just a hobby, an activity—something to suffer through to shed a few pounds. Spurred by a few visionaries in cities around the globe, our sport has become a culture. A lifestyle. A gathering place that celebrates diversity and strength. In this series, Health - Injuries Jaybird, we speak with some of those visionaries to find out why the best way to tap into the rhythm of a city is on two feet. In this edition, we hear from Knox Robinson. The former editor-in-chief of FADER magazine and current DJ, writer, and mindfulness expert founded Black Roses Run—one of New York City's most influential running crews—in Here, in their own words, is what it’s like to run in their world.
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Some people may find it hard to believe, but I wasn’t trying to “do” anything when my partner and I created the idea of a non-traditional running group, Black Roses NYC.
For me, I wanted to serve the new runners who joined the boom in 2011 and 2012. There was this surge of runners from unexpected backgrounds, and Black Roses gives those runners a chance to share their ideas of running and culture with New York City.
I want Black Roses to serve as a mirror to the greatest city on the planet, always pursuing that moment of beauty and transcendence.
The Sights
As a runner, an active person in New York City, you have to participate and communicate with the city as if it’s a living being. It might sound silly, but we pick running routes that have a certain latent energy. We run along the waterways every chance we get. For safety and vibe levels, we’ll avoid vehicular traffic—even if it’d be cool to jump over cars. We really commune with the city—both the human dimension and natural world.
That’s one reason we love running on The High Line,an old railroad line that runs along the west side. It makes us think about the permanence of what we’re doing. The native trees and the grass that have been replanted on The High Line were once all over Manhattan. The High Line was this industrial railroad, and now it’s a park. Things change, and people change. It’s important to seize each moment—seize each run.
The Sounds
Run In My World the FADER. The city is musical, thanks to its culture. It’s an incredible hotbed of all sorts of music, from jazz and hip hop to salsa and Afro-Cuban music to amazing Indian classical music.
I don’t always listen to music on a run. There are times, like during a hard tempo run, I tune out immediate concerns of heart rate and pace and steps per minute and plug into, literally, the frequency of the city, and I get energy from that.
I’ve only recently started listening to music while I run, thanks to the improving technology. I have two types of music I’ll listen to: a Jay Electronica mixtape, or one from Mos Def where he's rapping over Marvin Gaye tracks. That stuff and then I have a playlist of spiritual vibes and astral jazz, sax with sitars and harp—Coltrane, Pharaoh Sanders, Carlos Santana. Basically, it could either be spiritual jazz or low BPM stuff like trap music. I’ve CA Notice at Collection Health - Injuries Jaybird Health - Injuries.
The Tastes
We use two guiding principles to plan our routes: We want the runs to have texture—a gritty surface to wake up the feet, like the Brooklyn Navy Yard or the off-hours of a construction site; and we want to end our runs at a really amazing restaurant that’s also a stone’s throw away from a record shop.
So the runs are really an excuse to get that amazing fuel and to jump in a record shop and maybe pick up some new music.
The Race
I’ve run the New York City Marathon ab times. Running the marathon—the biggest in the world with more than 50,000 runners—instantly makes you a New Yorker. You feel this communion with the city, and not just physically. Running New York is this incredible experience, which may be on par with witnessing the birth of one’s children.
The weeks leading up to race day, the entire city starts to check in with the marathon. The city reaches out and salutes you. Once, finishing up a training run, this taxi cab pulled up to me, he rolls down the window, keeps my pace, and says, “Lookin’ good.”
New York City and New Yorkers respect you during marathon season. It doesn’t mean cyclists or cabbies won’t try to run you over, or your coworkers aren’t sick of hearing about your training, but you’ve got random citizens hailing you up and letting you know you’re doing an okay job and you’re going to be fine on race day.
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Read more as Runner’s World and Jaybird DAA Industry Opt Out Tokyo, London, and Chamonix, Black Roses NYC.
