And you thought you hated the subway!
To avoid trekking through smelly train stations, these New Yorkers have turned their work commutes into workouts — traveling by foot, board and even boat. Here, they reveal how their active routines boost their moods and health. Spoiler: They don’t envy your Metrocard.
Chris Solarz
Commute time: 25 to 35 minutes
Route: Solarz walks down Third Avenue to his 55th Street office, then runs home to the Upper East Side through Central Park
Weekly mileage: 100
Monday through Friday, pension-fund consultant Chris Solarz wakes up and runs 10 to 12 miles in Central Park — before walking 50 blocks to his Midtown office. In the evenings, he picks the pace back up for a 25-minute jog home.
It’s a lot of cardio — but it beats swiping a MetroCard, Solarz says.
“If you take the subway, it takes 25 minutes nine out of 10 days,” says the 40-year-old, who runs 15 marathons annually. “But on that 10th day, anything goes. If you’re relying on your own two feet, there are no mistakes.”
Solarz began his fast-paced commute during the 2003 blackout. That night, he ran 8 miles uptown to a party at his now-wife’s apartment.
“It just clicked for me — this is what I should do every day,” says Solarz, who’s training for his 16th New York City Marathon and burns about 3,800 calories daily.
After each Monday morning run, he showers at home, then packs a bag full of workout clothes — which he keeps at the office and changes into every night for his evening run. His work clothes, in turn, get stashed in an office closet. He carts them all home on his back every Friday night, on a run that takes him through Central Park.
“That’s my slowest [run] of the week,” he says.
Tom Contegiacomo
Commute time: 8 minutes
Route: Contegiacomo shreds up the Hudson River Greenway on his longboard, then across Canal Street to arrive in the office
Weekly mileage: 35
Every day, architect Tom Contegiacomo zooms 2 miles from the Financial District to his Soho office on four wheels — but not in a car.
Instead, the 53-year-old grabs a longboard — a skateboard-like contraption that’s better for higher speeds and longer distances — to shred up the Hudson River Greenway, then across Canal Street.
“I can push pretty fast,” says Contegiacomo, who began longboarding 13 years ago to supervise his three kids when they learned to ride bicycles. Plus, “I don’t have to worry about locking a bike. I can just skate, pick it up and walk into the office.” He’ll take the train for longer journeys, but toughs out winter with a hat and gloves.
Contegiacomo doesn’t know how many calories he burns, but believes his rides are doing his body good.
“I think I am the healthiest I’ve ever been,” he says.
Pete Malinowski
Commute time: 40 minutes to the office
Route: Malinowski bikes from Clinton Hill to the Brooklyn Navy Yard, where he picks up his dory rowboat to take downriver to Governors Island
Weekly mileage: 17.5
Some locals check the arrivals board in the train station. Brooklyn resident Pete Malinowski uses a navigation app to analyze tidal currents in the East River.
That’s because Malinowski, 36, likes to row, row, row his boat from the Brooklyn Navy Yard to Governors Island during the warmer months.
On clear days, he rides his bike from his Clinton Hill home to the Navy Yard, where his organization, Billion Oyster Project, has an oyster nursery. There, he grabs his 13-foot dory boat to head to work on Governors Island.
“Taking the rowboat is not always faster, but it gives me full control, which is important,” he says.
Malinowski, who does these trips from April to November, partly attributes his nautical commute to his upbringing on Fishers Island in Long Island Sound.
“I grew up on the water,” says Malinowski, who equates the trip exertion to a low-sweat jog. “I don’t get any of that in [the city] and, for me, it’s one of the ways I’ve figured out how to exist [here] and be happy.”
It also helps that his job doesn’t have a strict dress code.
“I’m not wearing a suit while I do it,” he says.
Claude Meliarenne
Commute time: Around 2 hours home to Fort Lee, NJ, from the Upper West Side
Route: Meliarenne has three evening routes between 13 and 15 miles each, including a trek up Riverside Drive, across the George Washington Bridge and down the Fort Lee riverfront
Weekly miles: 85 to 125
Some spend months training for a half marathon. Fort Lee, NJ, resident Claude Meliarenne runs that distance — sometimes even more — every day from work.
“I have pictures of me running in a snowstorm,” says the 48-year-old, a business manager for an after-school program who recently qualified for his sixth Boston Marathon. “I never take a day off.”
Meliarenne splits his day between two offices. In the mornings, he walks 1 mile to the first one in Fort Lee. Then, at 1 p.m., he walks across the George Washington Bridge from Fort Lee to Washington Heights. From there, he hops a quick subway to the Upper West Side office — although he wishes he could skip that part.
“I just don’t feel well in it,” he says of the train. “I just don’t like going down there.”
His mood picks back up for his 5:30 p.m. run, even though he’s stuck carrying a backpack stuffed with paperwork and his work clothes. He has a few routes — one across the George Washington, another with a Central Park loop — but they all take about 2 hours. He sheds some 2,000 calories daily.
The key to staying on track? Don’t overthink it, Meliarenne says.
“If you hesitate, I think you’re done,” he says. “I go straight out, don’t think about it and then I’m fine.”
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