Take a Minute to Learn About the Fred Lebow Half-Marathon Medal
With more than two laps of Central Park to run—and that includes three times up Harlem Hill—runners in this weekend’s NYRR Fred Lebow Half-Marathon will certainly have earned their finisher medals after 13.1 miles. Let’s now see what they have to look forward to at the finish line, along with some insight into how that medal was designed.
To start, here’s a look at the medal itself:
For last year’s race, NYRR’s creative services team took the traditional circle shape of a finisher medal and added three “timing buttons” to the outside of the medal, giving it the appearance of an old-fashioned stopwatch. The stopwatch design was created as an homage to Fred Lebow and his connection to Central Park; a statue of the longtime NYRR president checking his stopwatch stands just inside of Engineers’ Gate at East 90th Street, and runners will pass Fred’s statue twice during their race.
“We are so lucky to have a group of dedicated local runners who enjoy the history and lore of NYRR, and a sincere ongoing love for our iconic figures like Fred and Ted [Corbitt],” said Mary Beth Kilkelly, director of creative and marketing services at NYRR. “It’s a real treat for the creative team to explore the fun at the core of NYRR, and to have the freedom and support to do so in a sophisticated, nuanced way.”
This year, the creative services team at NYRR took the medal design a step further and added a moving element: A minute hand that can rotate 360 degrees across the clock face.
But with thousands of medals to design, approve, cast, and ultimately deliver to the race course, how does adding in moving parts affect the process? For answers on that, we turned to Rachel Isaac, assistant manager of creative services at NYRR, who led the design and oversaw the production process on this project.
(L-R): The 2018 NYRR Fred Lebow Manhattan Half medal, and the 2019 and 2020 Fred Lebow Half-Marathon medals
“The response on the design last year was very good, so we began brainstorming what we could do next to take it up a notch,” she said of the beginning of the project. She noted that having a template from the previous year made the work “easier in that we knew we had a good idea, but harder in that you don’t want to do the same thing every year.”
Isaac then went on to say, “Weekly races have a special place in my heart. I think this is because it’s the New York-area runners and club runners who might run these races year after year, so if they have all the medals lined up on their medal rack, they could be very discerning.”
But before circulating any sketches for review, the team had to account for the runner’s experience with the medal, and that included how the team at the NYRR RUNCENTER featuring the NB Run Hub would be able to engrave runners’ finish times on the backs of the medals.
“A lot of our medals are moving away from circles, so it can actually be a little tricky to engrave on,” explained Isaac. “[The RUNCENTER staff] were worried that things poking out from the medal might get stuck, so after last year, we talked about how it worked and what we could improve to make the process better.”
The reverse side of the 2019 and 2020 medals, with space for a runner's name and finish time.
With the sizing and specifications in line, Isaac moved toward the design of the medal itself, looking to find how the team could incorporate the spinning minute hand. “We were most worried about it being too flimsy or not working well,” she said. “We looked at a lot of samples to see what sort of things seemed successful and what things did not. We did a lot of tests.”
Included in those tests was another look into the issue of medal engraving, as they aimed to ensure that the moving pieces would not disrupt the engraving needle—after all, the team didn’t want a runner’s new PR to be soured by a mishap at the medal engraving station.
“I had a lot of calls about it, which might seem silly, but ultimately we also have a lot of trust in our vendors,” Isaac commented. “The vendor ended up making the hand of the watch thicker just to be safe.”
Notes and specifications on the design in progress.
Now that you, the reader, know the work that went in to creating your finisher medal, the rest is up to you, the runner. All it takes is two laps around Central Park, plus once more up Harlem Hill, and you’ve got yourself a medal that will stand out in your collection for minutes, hours, days, and years to come.
