Earlier than dawn final Friday, Oz Pearlman loosened up in entrance of Engineers’ Gate, one of many entrances to Central Park. He rubbed up his thighs and underarms with petroleum jelly, then peeled off his toe socks and coated his ft. This could not be a typical weekday morning jaunt by Manhattan’s most well-liked and most storied working terrain.
Wearing Ukraine’s nationwide colours, and sporting two GPS watches to file distance and time, Pearlman laced up his Day-Glo sneakers and stood in the midst of East Drive, in entrance of a Ukrainian flag, with a handful of spectators. He deliberate to run all day and into the evening as he tried to interrupt the file for many Central Park loops accomplished in a single day, whereas elevating cash to assist Ukrainian kids displaced by Russia’s invasion of the nation.
Pearlman, 39, who lives in Brooklyn, is healthier recognized by his stage identify, Oz the Mentalist. (Oz rhymes with “garments.”) He completed third on Season 10 of “America’s Got Talent” in 2015, and has appeared on “Today,” “Live With Kelly and Ryan” and “Ellen.” His future can be one more show of thoughts over matter.
The file Pearlman hoped to interrupt was set in 2021 by Robbie Balenger, an ultrarunner who rose to prominence by knocking off multiday ultradistance challenges. In 2019, Balenger ran throughout the continental United States. Final summer time, he accomplished what he known as the Colorado Crush: 1,176 miles of working and over 300,000 vertical ft of elevation acquire in 63 days, capped off by the Leadville Path 100-mile race.
In line with Quickest Identified Time, the digital platform that collects and certifies “F.Ok.T.s” on terrain each well-known — such because the Seven Summits — and obscure, Pearlman must do greater than merely run one mile longer than Balenger. He would want to finish one other full loop.
Though the park itself was created in 1858, the primary quickest recognized time in Central Park was set in 2020 by Aaron Zellhoefer, who ran 11 loops in simply over 14 hours. It was one in every of 1000’s of F.Ok.T.s established through the pandemic when races have been canceled and runners have been on the lookout for new challenges. A lot of these information are regional and comparatively inconsequential, however this one issues to many. Central Park is a world working vacation spot and residential to greater than two dozen races annually. It’s the place the New York Metropolis Marathon ends.
To organize for the Central Park Loop Challenge, Pearlman accomplished a number of runs over 20 miles, normally on the highway earlier than or between reveals. When he’s house in Brooklyn, the place he lives along with his spouse, Elisa Rosen, and their three kids, he actually runs errands, sweating by college drop-offs and pickups. He has skilled in Central Park for practically 20 years and dedicated each bend of the highway, every hill and straightaway, to reminiscence. “It’s house floor,” he mentioned. “That six-mile loop is my consolation zone.”
However there can be a ticking clock. Central Park is open from 6 a.m. to 1 a.m., and runners should not permitted on the roads till 5 minutes after opening. They have to be out of the park 5 minutes earlier than closing time. That gave Pearlman 18 hours 50 minutes to set a file.
At 6:05 a.m. sharp, he took off scorching. He ran uptown, counterclockwise, at a tempo underneath 7:30 per mile. Mike Halovatch, a fixture in New York’s ultrarunning scene, was his solely pacer for the primary loop, which he completed in underneath 45 minutes. It could have been quicker if not for last-minute recommendation from a stranger who insisted he stroll the 2 huge hills.
Pearlman has received the New Jersey Marathon 4 instances and the Hamptons Marathon thrice. His private finest within the marathon distance locations him simply outdoors the vary of males invited to the Olympic trials.
“Oz is a real thoroughbred,” Halovatch mentioned. Referring to Pearlman’s private finest time within the Philadelphia Marathon in 2014, he mentioned, “You run a 2:23 marathon, that’s working.”
Pearlman wasn’t at all times fleet of foot. He was the bottom ranked runner on his cross-country crew in highschool, however by then he was already doing magic reveals in eating places. After a divorce left his dad and mom in monetary uncertainty, he mentioned, he leaned into magic to place himself by the College of Michigan. After faculty, he was an entry degree analyst for Merrill Lynch and moonlighted as a magician.
He labored eating places on the Higher East Facet, did bar mitzvahs and wowed colleagues at comfortable hour. His worlds collided throughout his funding banking profession when he was employed to work an occasion in honor of a Merrill government. When Pearlman turned a $1 invoice into a number of Benjamins with a snap of his fingers, the boss was impressed, till he discovered Pearlman labored for him.
“He mentioned, ‘What the hell are you doing working right here?’ And I believed, ‘What am I doing working right here?’” Pearlman put in his discover a number of weeks later, not lengthy after working his first marathon.
He regularly shifted from commonplace magic to mentalism. “It’s a bit extra cerebral,” he mentioned. “It’s about making an attempt to decipher and reverse engineer the way in which individuals assume. Basically, I’m making an attempt to plant an concept in your head or get an inconceivable thought out of your head.”
He requested me to think about the identify of my first crush, who occurred to be somebody I haven’t seen, heard from and even considered in a long time. He nailed it. Whereas he was working. At Mile 80.
After ending every loop on Friday, he took a query despatched in from amongst his 812,000 Instagram followers. One requested, “Does working assist your mentalism?”
“Mentalism helps my working,” he replied. “If I can get inside your mind, I can get inside my very own mind after I’m struggling, dig deep and hold working.”
The solar broke by clouds on his third loop, and his tempo held regular because the sky brightened and the miles piled up, a lot to the priority of Halovatch and his spouse, Kate Pallardy, an elite distance runner and triathlete. They’ve realized from expertise {that a} slower tempo early normally yields a greater lead to any such occasion. Pallardy ran 18 miles with Pearlman at noon, simply 5 weeks after giving beginning to her third youngster.
In whole, about 40 runners got here out to tempo him. In typical New York vogue, lots of them simply occurred upon Oz and joined proper in. He chatted breezily, and did his finest to entertain all of them. “It’s the performer in me,” he mentioned. However like Pallardy and Halovatch, he knew the struggling would start sooner or later, and simply earlier than Mile 50, it hit arduous.
“Your thoughts performs methods on you,” he mentioned as he completed his eighth loop. “You begin considering of how a lot additional and the way a lot time you’ve got, and doubts creep in. They only eat at you. It’s your thoughts telling you to stop.”
Twenty miles later, on his twelfth loop, his digestion faltered. He had been consuming nothing however gels (he sucked down two or three per lap), caffeine gummies and orange Gatorade. Maybe that took its toll. Or it may have been that he had labored late the evening earlier than and managed solely 4 hours of sleep.
He vomited twice and needed to discover a bathroom. His tempo dropped from eight minutes per mile to over 12. The colour drained from his face. He felt blisters type on the underside of his ft. His proper shin began to throb. His crew crammed his hat with ice, which he dumped on his head to wake himself up. As soon as his abdomen settled, he popped extra caffeine gummies to maintain himself buzzing.
As is commonly the case with extremely, that interval of ache and deep exhaustion was chased by an prolonged movement state. Towards the top of his thirteenth lap, he hit prime gear. Rocking to playlists he had curated for the event, he sang aloud as he ran. His 91st mile was his quickest: 6:43.
Pearlman accomplished his sixteenth loop, and 98 miles, at round 8:20 p.m., to equal Balenger’s distance file. He ran roughly 4 hours quicker than Balenger. Two miles later, he hit 100 miles with a time of 14 hours 36 minutes, beating his personal 100-mile file by two hours.
When he completed his seventeenth lap at 9:15 p.m. to set the Central Park Loop Challenge F.K.T., he paused to hug his spouse and have fun with mates who confirmed that he had additionally surpassed his fund-raising objective of over $100,000. However he wasn’t executed. His pacers, a few of them seasoned ultrarunners, wouldn’t let him go house. They insisted he tack on a number of extra laps to the brand new Central Park Loop Problem F.Ok.T. So a couple of minutes later, he was working uptown as soon as once more.
On his 18th lap, he savored the slower tempo and the hills as a result of they allowed him to stroll. It was apparent from his expression that his proper shin was getting worse. He popped ibuprofen to maintain the swelling down and the ache at bay, and saved shifting.
His nineteenth and closing loop was his victory lap. “I informed the fellows, we’re going to complete the way in which we began: sturdy. And I simply went for it.”
He ran, all out, usually along with his eyes closed. It was as much as his pacers to ensure he stayed on target, and so they did. When he reached Engineers’ Gate for the ultimate time simply earlier than midnight on Friday, after working a complete of 19 loops and 116 miles, he fell to the bottom, elated but spent.
“I had a spectacular day,” he mentioned. “There’s simply no different approach to describe it.”
Hilary Swift contributed reporting.
