A ‘Bar Crawl for Gyms’: Urban Iron Aims To Bring Together Fitness Communities

The hybrid event is redefining fitness in New York City by merging running and strength training into a “gym crawl” that connects NYC fitness operators, hundreds of athletes and top sponsors like AG1 and Rivian

Louisa Li and Jacob Schonberger are two very different athletes: Li is a certified yoga instructor, while Schonberger is an Ironman triathlete. But their differences are what inspired the pair to come together and create a unique event that brings together different types of fitness and wellness communities in New York City.

“Seeing all the different communities in New York you have, like the runners and then the people that go to the boutique fitness studios, we actually hadn’t really seen all of them merge,” Li told Athletech News.

That is where the idea for Urban Iron came about: a hybrid race running between different fitness clubs to complete a variety of functional strength movements, testing athletes from all backgrounds.

Essentially, according to Li, she and Schonberger wanted to create “A bar crawl but for gyms.”

In its second event this year, Urban Iron will test the endurance and strength of 125 NYC athletes on October 26. 

Participants will have to cover eight miles across Brooklyn and Manhattan, beginning in Domino Park and tasked with the following: 

• Run a quarter-mile to Session Training in South Williamsburg to complete 30 sandball slams, 50 kettlebell swings and 30 dumbbell presses.
• Run 3.8 miles to Solace in Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood, to do 30 pull-ups, 40 wall balls and one-lap sled push
• Run 1.5 miles to Motivny in lower Manhattan for two laps of Bulgarian bag walking lunges, 30 kettlebell dead cleans and 20 single-arm kettlebell bent-over rows on each arm.

Finally, participants run two miles to finish at Rivian Williamsburg for the afterparty, featuring a live DJ, ice baths by Ice Cold Club, a finisher podium, brand booths and giveaways.

The Hybrid Race Boom

In June of this year, Urban Iron hosted its first event. It sold out in less than three days, drawing 110 participants. But the brand quickly amassed a waitlist of over 400 people — that’s when Li said she and Schonberger realized, “This is a movement, there’s something here.”

She thinks races like Hyrox are booming because of the fun challenge they present, while also being less intimidating than running a marathon or competing in a CrossFit competition.

“We’re riding this hybrid athlete wave,” Li told ATN. “A hybrid race feels so much more accessible and digestible than going all in on one or the other.”

Hybrid races are fitness events that merge different modalities, such as a combination of running and weightlifting, as Hyrox is known for. People who train for these kinds of events, or to improve their fitness in multiple areas, are often called hybrid athletes.

After the success of the first event — and the massive waitlist — Li and Schonberger decided to put on a second 2025 race.

Partners & Sponsors Across Fitness, Wellness & Beyond

The fitness clubs chosen for Urban Iron were entirely crowdsourced, Li said, through an Instagram poll that asked, “What are the best gyms in New York that we should be looking into?”

From there, Li and Schonberger let clubs take the lead on deciding which exercises athletes needed to complete at their locations, asking them to choose movements that best represented their brands.

In an event centered around community-building, Li said they wanted to include partners that reflected the same passion for bringing people together through fitness and wellness in NYC.

As the founder of Shanti House, a space dedicated to curated wellness events among business leaders in the community, Li utilized her established connections with brands.

“I would see these brands over and over again,” she said, which indicated to her how invested they were in the NYC fitness and wellness community.

Nutritional supplement giant AG1 will be the title sponsor for not only the October event, but also the next three cities, Li said, returning after sponsoring Urban Iron’s June debut. 

In addition to its fitness and wellness partners, Urban Iron also brought on electric car brand Rivian, which will offer a mobile bag drop that will bring participants’ belongings from start to finish at its Williamsburg location (Li had noticed that Rivian made a concerted effort to get involved in the NYC running community by sponsoring several running events and clubs recently, partnering with brands like Motivny and Teamwrk).

‘Great Margins’

The event is proving to be a financial success as well — Li told ATN that keeping costs low so far has meant they haven’t had to take any investor funding yet. Bringing traffic and brand awareness to the fitness clubs allows them to use the facilities for free, creating what Li calls a “win-win” relationship. 

And without the expenses to set up a stadium like other hybrid events, nor the need to pay out salaries (Li and Schonberger are the only two members of the Urban Iron team), the structure remains financially sound.

“We have really great margins,” Li said. As the race expands, however, she envisions there will be a need to hire more people onto the team.

Li revealed she and Schonberger are also planning to expand Urban Iron to other cities, with an Austin event slated for December, and Chicago and Los Angeles in February or March of 2026. Looking ahead, Urban Iron hopes to add a new city every quarter, expanding to places like Boston and Washington, D.C., while keeping two races in NYC every spring and fall.