Mike Owczarek opens up about the groundwork he laid and the mindset he fostered to finally cross the finish line of the 2025 New York City Marathon.
Twenty-three miles in, pain shot up Mike Owczarek’s left ankle, stopping him in his tracks. For the final three miles of his self-made marathon through New York City in 2020 — the year the official race was canceled due to COVID-19 — he alternated between walking and shuffling until he crossed his Central Park finish line.
“I knew I wasn't really trained for it, and I was [already] dealing with something in my right foot, but I was like, ‘Just run it responsibly,’ this and that,” recalls the Equinox Hudson Yards COACH+ and Group Fitness Instructor. “I wasn't trained for it, and I ran it. My body was feeling hurt, but that's the marathon.”
The pain never subsided. A physical therapist initially attributed it to peroneal tendonitis, a misdiagnosis that Owczarek later learned from an MRI was actually a tear. In 2022, he got surgery to mend it. Recovery was long and physical therapy was uncomfortable at times, and another MRI revealed a chronic fracture, a torn medial collateral ligament, and arthritis in his left big toe. He was only able to walk the shorter races he had signed up for. Just six months ago, he couldn’t even run a mile. “But I knew I wanted to do a marathon just because I was like, ‘I can't end it on this. I have to get back,’” he says.
And he did. Earlier this month, Owczarek went the distance in the 2025 New York City Marathon, finishing with a time of 4:27:26. “I had zero expectations. For another human, that's almost, like, impossible to have zero expectations, but for me, like, [I’m] always having expectations,” he says. “Honestly, I can say I was really just taking it one step at a time. There are so many thoughts that go through your head, but there were no expectations.”
He did have one goal, though: to finish the race healthy.
To do so, Owczarek had to be strategic in the lead-up to the event. He invested in two pairs of cushy running shoes to reduce arthritis-related aches. He blocked out time for training on his calendar and made sure to tick all the boxes each week: gentle morning movement flows, upper-body work, cycling, speed sessions, fast-meets-easy miles, long runs, kettlebell work, and recovery moments. About six weeks before the race, he also started doing shake-out runs. “My shake-out runs are very, like, ‘Mike, what kind of run would you like to do for the rest of your life?’” Owczarek says. If a friend were to ask him to join a workout, he explains, he should be able to go for that run after a quick round of lunges and hops — and be able to keep his phone and keys in his pocket. “That's been amazing for me,” he says.
Owczarek also booked his first robotics-powered Aescape massages at the Spa. Ahead of the marathon, he tested 30-minute lower-body and full-body sessions and took advantage of the high-tech massage table’s customization options, playing with different pressure levels. It was an instant hit: “When I did the first one, I was recommending it to everyone the next day at the Club,” he says.
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Even with his thorough pre-race prep and Que será, será attitude, Owczarek still woke up at 3 a.m. on marathon day with nerves, questioning whether he had fallen behind in carb-loading. He spent the next seven hours flowing through his usual morning movement routine, fueling, and reflecting. At 10:20 a.m., the cannon fired. “That first moment when they open up your corral and…you see the Verrazzano[-Narrows] Bridge, there's like this subtle quietness,” he says. “It was special.”
Trekking those 26.2 miles, Owczarek noticed himself overthinking the minor yellow flags he would normally shrug off, like his calf overworking and his sock rubbing against the bottom of his foot. He saw clients and family members cheering him on, pushed through hamstring cramps and stomach aches, and even walked when the pain was too much to bear. At mile 25, he hugged his sister, then grabbed his first pair of running shoes — signed by and nicknamed after his grandfather — from his dad, which he carried through the finish.
“There were points where I was just like, ‘I could walk this through. I'm just enjoying it.’ I was also very tired, [but] I was just in bliss,” he says in an interview a few days after the race. “I was beat up in the most good way. When I first did it in 2020, I was beat up but not in a good way. There was ego driving that — there was not good stuff fueling that run.”
This time around, Owczarek can say with 100-percent certainty that he met his goal of a healthy finish — even if there were challenges along the way. “This past Sunday,” he adds, “I was beat up in the most peaceful way.”
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Main photo by Reuben Ingber.