As we run past the grand stone towers of the Brooklyn Bridge, tour guide Michael Gazaleh tells me how the bridge's engineer, John Roebling, died while working on it. His son took over, but was sickened and paralyzed by the bends while working on the bridge's foundation.
I wonder if I'm about to add to the bridge's casualty list as I huff and puff up the pedestrian path's slight incline, my lungs burning. But my efforts are rewarded when I raise my head and see Manhattan's skyline against a clear winter sky, a perspective I have glimpsed only briefly before from behind car windows. Following my guide's lead, I weave around tourists posing with their cameras and dodge bike commuters. Until we stop for our own photos (and a much-needed breather), I feel like part of the city - not a mere tourist, but a runner.
That's the idea behind sightjogging, a trend in active tourism that has visitors dashing past points of interest in cities including New York, Jerusalem, Rome, Berlin and Barcelona. Sometimes trying to see a foreign city in a few days feels like a race; on these tours, you're actually supposed to be running, and you can cover a huge swath of a city in a short period of time.
"It was unlike anything I've ever done," says Amy Davis, a 36-year-old mental-health worker from Sarnia, Ont., who ran with a friend and Gazaleh on her first visit to New York in December. They ran past ground zero, through Wall Street, over the Brooklyn Bridge, through two hip Brooklyn neighbourhoods, back into Manhattan's Chinatown, and ended up in Little Italy - about 13 kilometres
"I'm not a marathon runner by any means. But I thought, 'What a great way to sightsee and get your run in,' " Davis says.
Gazaleh, a chiropractor, started City Running Tours in 2005 as a way to combine two of his favourite things, running and New York City. He has since expanded the business to Chicago, San Diego, Washington, D.C., Charleston, S.C., and Austin, Tex. He plans to add Philadelphia this year.
Gazaleh caters to every nationality on his runs, but notes that he sees a lot of Canadians - especially during the winter, when runners from less-hardy climates shrink from New York's cold temperatures. But aside from the cold, the surprises tend to be positive: discovering Harlem, for instance, or the blink-and-you'll-miss-it African Burial Ground National Monument sandwiched between office buildings downtown. And seeing Manhattan at a jog certainly gives visitors a new appreciation
for the terrain, he says: "People are surprised at how hilly it is."
Some of his clients are dedicated runners, but not all of them. Gazaleh has done tours for everyone from marathoners-in-training to families with jogging strollers and dogs. For non-athletic visitors, sightjogging is a way to get off the beaten tourist path, he says. It allows them to see things they would never notice from a bus - while covering more ground than a typical walking tour.
Yet while Gazaleh says he's happy to stop whenever his clients want in order to discuss history or take pictures, most of them prefer just to keep going. As a runner himself, he understands. "To our clients, running is probably one of the most important things in their lives," he says.
Natalie Grofman, owner of Run the City, which leads tours in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, believes that runners actually get more out of their tours than more sedentary visitors: "The high level of endorphins enhances reception of information and the level of enjoyment," she says. "Most of our clients make notes in their memories, pick the sites they enjoyed most and go back there the following day to have a closer look, a cup of coffee or buy a certain necklace."
