It was unusual, as birthday presents go: When their Ironman competitor pal turned 30, a group of friends in New York City hired an elite distance runner to take him on a workout, flying her in from Arizona for a showdown on a Manhattan track.
Standing near the starting line of the East River Park track on a recent wiltingly hot Saturday morning, Dan Goldberg, the mastermind behind the gift for his friend Rob Brink, beamed in anticipation.
“It kind of feels like a present to ourselves, after all these years of having him beat us,” Goldberg said as Brink, a business school student at Cornell, tentatively toed the line with Sara Slattery, 33, a national champion distance runner.