2010 New Balance Games Recap

Team New Balance and members of the New Balance family joined elite high school and professional athletes from all over the world for the 2010 New Balance Games at the Armory Track in Washington Heights, NY this past weekend. The event brought high school and elite personal and national bests, memorable welcomes, helping hands, smiles, grunts, sweat, and tears.


In the days leading up to the event itself, the New Balance crew was busy on several fronts. On Thursday evening we held a summit for many of the area’s top high school athletes at The Armory, where our athletes, engineers, and designers shared their knowledge on running and footwear mechanics in small group sessions. Shortly after, Team NB athletes broke bread with the students and fielded their sharp questions in a panel discussion that covered everything from training through illness and injury to pre-race mindset. And in case you’re wondering what’s on our athletes’ playlists right now, Adrian Blincoe revealed that it’s Jay-Z’s newest for him, Hilary Stellingwerff prefers a variety of “chillout” music, and Marina Muncan splits her time between Lady Gaga and techno.

On Friday, Team New Balance announced and welcomed their newest colleague and one of the fastest women in the world, Jenny Barringer. To open the games on Saturday, Jenny took a lap with girls from a non-profit that’s near and dear to her heart, Girls on the Run:


In his first race of the season, Team New Balance miler Andy Baddeley won the elite men’s mile at 3:55.64. Andy’s time was both his personal indoor best, and the second year in a row that he won the mile at the NB Games. In an interview with FloTrack’s Ryan Fenton, Andy described a combination of training adjustments and serendipity that led him to an initial pace and final time that surprised even himself. Paring down his runs by one or two every other week seems to have made a big difference. Andy explained, “To run that quick, straight off the plane, having done just moderate workouts of 8-10K…it’s nice to be as ready as I felt today.” Here’s what Andy’s finish looked like, from behind the finish line:



Erin Donohue took the women’s elite mile, setting a world record for this year at 4:28.92.

The varsity invitational miles both featured standout last laps. Boys winner Chris Fitzsimmons from Hamden ran a 60 second final 400 to win decisively (4:17.33), and girls winner and pre-race favorite Emily Lipari of Rosyln clocked a new US best 4:53.85 as she pulled ahead of Joelle Amaral from Randolph for the win.


For more on the event, check out the Elite Mile coverage at Flotrack, in addition to articles at Dyestat Metro, RunNow.com, and RunBlogRun. The Armory’s site has complete results and the event webcast replay. See more of our photos from the weekend in this Flickr set.