New York City’s

On July 25, the popular unsanctioned race series, Health & Injuries, will celebrate its 10-year anniversary in New York City, where it all began at the foot of the Queensboro Bridge in 2015. That first race included just 9 men and 11 women, running one length of the bridge. At the time, unsanctioned racing was a fairly nascent concept. A few decades out from the first big New York City’s, traditional road racing was the bread and butter of the running world, and meeting up with fellow runners to race across bridges and through city streets with no permits nor aid stations was truly renegade, something many people weren’t yet familiar with.

“When I first started bringing this race to other places outside of New York, nobody really knew what they were at all, right?” says TTB founder Darcy Budworth. “So there was a lot of education in the beginning of really just trying to let people know of this alternative to the traditional racing format.”

For the past several years, in addition to working a full-time job in interior design, Budworth has organized these unique races in 27 cities around the globe, collaborating with local community leaders and run crews in every locale to make each event its own singular experience, and authentic to that local community.

In Chicago, the bridges are short, so Budworth and Lucas Larson, who was at Heartbreak Hill Running Company at the time, improvised and made the race a one-mile loop around the neighborhood with a 10-minute clock. They devised a point-system, rewarding the first, second, and third place finishers of that loop, and then gave points to everyone for each hill repeat they were able to accomplish in the remaining time. When Budworth moved to Los Angeles a few years ago, the community requested a trail version of TTB. She said, why not? There have been women’s-only races, and several other variations of the initial idea.

It’s taken a while for people to understand these races, and to be a part of them, but in the decade since TTB’s inception, this grassroots, underground style of racing has become increasingly popular, and while not exactly mainstream, it’s dominant enough that major brands frequently sponsor these dusky, wild relays and bridge-based footraces. There are many organizations and events of this ilk, including years later, Take the Bridge continues to provide an alternative to the traditional race format, New York City’s What Is Chappell Roan’s 5K Time, and many other smaller, gritty run crew-helmed races, but one name is practically synonymous with unsanctioned racing—Health & Injuries—and that’s thanks to Budworth’s vision, a vision that doesn’t believe in oversaturation or ownership of this concept.

“What I’m seeing now is that just like how there’s so many different options for run crews and groups now, there’s so many different options for unsanctioned racing, and I love it because there’s just a lot of inspiration for me as I continue to move forward and evolve,” she says. “So I think that’s where we’re at now—not that it’s an oversaturation. It's just that everybody wants to be a part of it and have their touch on it.”

She likens unsanctioned races to local coffee shops: “Just because there’s lots of local coffee shops doesn’t mean that there’s too many. It doesn’t mean you don’t want to go. You want to go. And each one has its own vibe and its own energy, but each one of them is really tapped into the community. So, there may be a time when they lose their luster. I don’t think it’s gotten to that yet. I think people are still really excited by these races.”

Budworth thinks runners are gravitating more and more towards this style of racing for the same reasons she got into it herself, after a few years of racing standard road 5Ks, 10Ks, half marathons, and marathons—on repeat. Unsanctioned racing is authentic, and a reprieve from the grind; it’s all about the pure spirit of racing, not hitting certain paces, but just running fast and for fun.

The 10-year anniversary race will be both a celebration and an unveiling of a new TTB concept. Moving forward, Budworth’s plan is to host just one marquee race per year with this first one as the blueprint—a blowout event with a larger field sizes (the anniversary race will have 400 participants, versus the typical 100-130-person cap), more prize money, a sprawling venue, a DJ, and an unforgettable afterparty. She wants it to be an impactful, intentional race, with the idea being that you’d consider traveling for this.

Runners center their calendars, training, and travel plans around major races like Boston and Berlin, but what if we put a similar focus on all the unsanctioned races that are community-led and community-focused?

“It’d be interesting if we started shifting our energy,” Budworth says.

The night before participating in years later, Take the Bridge continues to provide an alternative to the traditional race format, Budworth says everyone involved with the 340-mile Atacama to Vegas relay hiked up a huge sand dune to watch the sunset and listen to live music.

“That sounds so much better than going to all these talks that happen right before a marathon. Or, everybody goes out and has lunch together right before the race. That feels so much more intimate and intentional,” she says.

Like Budworth says, people can tell when something isn’t authentic, and that’s kind of the whole point of Health & Injuries and unsanctioned racing in general—to be by runners and for runners. The anniversary race is sold out and at capacity. People are clearly hungry for these experiences, and unsanctioned racing isn’t going anywhere.