It’s a warm June night in 2025 and Joe Piechota ’98 is running through the streets of Brooklyn, N.Y., in the dark. He’s exhausted and disoriented when his foot doesn’t quite clear a raised sidewalk, sending him face first to the ground and skidding across the pavement. He’s covered in abrasions and dazed from the impact. Most worrying is his chin, split open and bleeding profusely. For a few moments, he can’t go on. You don’t need your chin to run though, he thinks before picking up the pace again. He can’t stop now. Piechota is at mile 78 of the 100-mile ultra marathon he’s running for his friend and fellow UAlbany alum, Irene Unger ’98. 

‍Fast Friends

I first talked to Piechota and Unger six weeks before the race. Piechota was telling me his plans for a 20-mile training run that weekend when Unger joined our video call, and the two started reminiscing about their college days with the chemistry of old buddies. Their friendship has always been set to music. They met early in their freshman year, when, they tell me, the price of a Dave Matthews Band concert ticket was only $15.

In 1994, Piechota was a Dave Matthews super fan. During high school in Vestal, N.Y., he earned backstage access after getting a homemade necklace to Matthews with the help of some roadies. When he moved into his room in Indian Tower (renamed Indigenous Tower in 2021) that August, he had his collection of live performance cassette tapes with him. 

It was the sounds of those tapes that drew Unger to Piechota’s room. “All I know is live Dave Matthews was coming out of this room and I was like, wait a second I've never heard anything like this,” the Queens native recalls. She introduced herself and the two stayed up until 4 a.m. talking and listening to music. “That soundtrack is stuck in my head as my core memory of getting to know Joe,” Unger adds. “We were fast friends.” 

After bonding over their love of “Dave” in the first few weeks at UAlbany, their social life revolved around going to the band’s concerts for the next four years. After graduation, they both moved to Queens and the two remained close friends. Unger, an English and communication major, got a job teaching English at Ossining High School, and Piechota put his business degree to work at a finance company in Manhattan. 

Piechota was a groomsman at Unger’s wedding, and they continued to meet up at concerts. Even when they started to grow their own families and their lives began to separate, Piechota never missed a chance to show up for Unger at her annual fundraiser: Walk MS.

Two Steps to a Hundred Miles

Unger developed Multiple Sclerosis (MS) soon after graduation, when she was 22. MS is a disease of the central nervous system that is unpredictable and often disabling. In the face of her devastating diagnosis, she immediately turned to activism. She formed a Walk MS team in 1999 that has since raised almost half a million dollars for the National MS Society in pursuit of a cure. Piechota has been at every walk since 2001. 

“I have pictures of him at the walk with his babies who are now not babies anymore,” says Unger. “Joe's always there. It doesn't matter — rain, freezing temperatures, beautiful days — they're just a no-excuse family. The whole Piechota family, they're there for me.”

Unger’s team is called the 2Steppers, named for her favorite Dave Matthews song, Two Step. The song’s lyric, “celebrate we will because life is short but sweet for certain,” has inspired her for 26 years to continue fighting to live a full life, despite the challenges of having MS. Regular, intense physical therapy has kept her out of a wheelchair, but she struggles with mobility, fatigue and cognitive issues. 

In 2014, the disease made it too difficult to continue her beloved teaching career. “I had and still have a soft spot for To Kill a Mockingbird,” Unger says. She used the book in a curriculum she created in collaboration with UAlbany’s University in the High School program. “I feel robbed of my ability to teach every day.” 

Piechota, who watched the impact of illness on his friend for years, experienced his own health crisis in 2015 when he developed the auto-immune disease Guillain-Barre Syndrome. “My body went numb from my shoulders down and I lost the ability to walk,” Piechota describes. He was in the hospital for three weeks and spent another nine months in rehab.  

He made a full recovery and, in the process, gained a new perspective. He started running. Short jogs at first, then longer and longer distances, propelled by gratitude for the able body he had temporarily lost. In 2024, he completed a 50-mile run on his own. Piechota reflects, “[Rebuilding from Guillain-Barre] was an extreme struggle that I feel like changed me as a person. It made me stronger and able to do these amazing runs.”

A year later, he set the bar even higher by entering The Great New York 100 Mile Running Exposition (TGNY100) and dedicating the race to Unger. He thought, “I have to do this for Irene. I have to make a big statement and try to really raise a ton of money. 100 miles for $100,000, that's got a good ring to it.”  

The power of that “big statement” hangs in our video chat window for a moment until Unger finds her words. “Joe is a true best friend,” she says.

Preparations

The next time I saw Piechota and Unger was two days before the race. Piechota invited me to sit in on a virtual meeting with his crew members. Throughout the 100-mile course, which begins in Times Square, heads north into the Bronx and winds through Queens and Brooklyn before finishing back at the start in midtown Manhattan, several family members and friends, including Unger, would help him at aid stations along the way.

Everyone on screen discussed final race-day logistics and asked last-minute questions. Piechota doesn’t leave anything to chance. The last six months of his life had been dictated by a spreadsheet titled “100 Mile Just Finish Training Plan.” Almost every day contained a strategically planned run or strength building workout.

“I have a full-time job, I have kids, so I'm fitting this in when I have time,” Piechota explains. To get his training run in on the day of Walk MS 2025, he woke up at 3:55 a.m. By the time he met Unger and the other 2Steppers for the walk at 9 a.m, he’d already run a half-marathon. 

Piechota still lives in Queens and trains on the streets of New York City. On long runs, he takes a combination of energy gels, bars and candy, as well as peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and electrolyte enhanced water. But a runner on a 100-mile journey can only carry so much. He assembled his crew to help him refuel during the race.

All day and all night — through traffic, uneven sidewalks, park trails and over bridges — Piechota’s crew members can track him through an app connected to his Garmin smartwatch. At the end of the meeting, Piechota implored the group to stay positive on race day no matter what. “Lie to me if you have to,” he says. “And lastly, do not let me quit.”

Race Day

The temperature is already in the 70s in the early morning on June 21, but the humidity is mercifully low. A small herd of approximately 140 runners gathers in Times Square, stretching and surreptitiously sizing each other up. The sky is still dark, but the iconic intersection is aglow from the lights of the surrounding billboards and marquees. At exactly 5 a.m., I get an alert on my phone from Garmin LiveTrack: “Joe P started an activity.” Piechota is off.

The TGNY100 herd stays together for about 10 blocks until the runners enter Central Park. Piechota finds his stride and moves north through the park alone before catching up to another runner. They fall in step, chatting as the pre-war buildings of the Upper West Side glide by and disappear behind them.

The other runner, who is doing TGNY100 for the seventh time and has completed the famously grueling Badwater ultramarathon, tells Piechota, “there's going to be a point in this race where you're about to quit and go home. You push through that moment and you're guaranteed to finish.” The two don’t stay together long and Piechota never sees him again.

By mile 15, as Piechota and a small group are making their way through the trails of Van Cortlandt Park in the Bronx, there’s talk of dropping out. It’s getting hot and some are already weary. It’s not something Piechota wants to hear. He’s feeling confident and runs ahead, distancing himself from any doubt.

He exits the park and meets his crew for the first time. His wife, Janet Abrams Piechota ’98, and son, Brighton, are there. It’s a relief to see their faces. For the next 35 miles, they meet Piechota at set intervals with the family’s silver Subaru packed with supplies he meticulously organized in storage containers.

As the morning wears on, the temperature moves into the 80s. At mile 22, he ties an ice bandana around his neck and throws a handful of ice cubes under his hat. It’s hard to eat in the heat, but he forces down a few bites of peanut butter and jelly sandwich every 20 minutes while moving. 

While crossing the long expanse of the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge, Piechota feels a sudden burst of strength and picks up his speed as he approaches mile 37 in Queens, where a group of friends are there to surprise him. 

With more than a third of the race over, he checks his feet for the first time. No blisters. For distance runners, a blister can be a race-ending malady. Piechota changes his socks, applying lubricant to prevent chafing, and treats himself to a few sips of Dr Pepper before moving on.

As the miles pass, he doesn’t think of the finish line. He keeps his mind on getting to the next aid station and focuses on the turns he needs to make to stay on course. Occasionally he passes other runners with a polite nod, but mostly he’s alone.

After a brutal hill near Alley Pond Park in Queens, Piechota meets his crew just beyond the halfway point. He’s in uncharted territory, past the longest distance he’s ever run, with 50 miles to go. Unger is there waiting. She gives him a high-five and a “you’ve got this.” They stand together, Piechota with a Gatorade in hand — two friends who have shown up for each other for more than 30 years.

Piechota is tired but motivated. Miraculously he still has no blisters or sharp pains indicating a serious injury. It’s time to push on.

His uncle Dom Arioli, and sister, UAlbany alum Julie Andersen ’96, transfer the race supplies and take over as main support along with his daughter, Daniela. For the next seven hours, they receive Piechota at five-mile intervals like a racecar pulling over for service by its pit crew. At one point, he rolls in with pain delivered by his ice-filled bandana. It got him through the hottest part of the day but now it’s late afternoon and his neck and shoulders are aching from the weight of it. Uncle Dom works on the muscles with a Theragun and releases him for the next interval.  

Time passes quickly on the course. Before he knows it, it’s 7 p.m. at mile 70 and Piechota pulls out his night gear: reflectors and an emergency light. Only 30 miles to go, he reassures himself. At the next aid station, he learns he’s in 10^th place. More than his caffeinated energy liquid, the excitement of potentially finishing in the top 10 fuels the weary Piechota.

Before the race, he arranged for two pacers to run with him for the final stretch. Pacers are common and sanctioned in the official race rules. A seasoned runner named Jamie Kohn joins Piechota and begins pointing out curbs and uneven sidewalks. But even with the second pair of eyes guiding him, Piechota misses a step and takes that massive fall at mile 78. 

Kohn stems the bleeding from Piechota’s chin with paper towels until his crew team arrives on the scene. Uncle Dom owns a boxing gym and within minutes has his injured nephew patched up with a butterfly bandage. Piechota shakes off the tumble and starts running again. At this point, it’s less painful than walking. His second pacer, Andrew Levinson, arrives and the trio make their way under the streetlights.

Finally, the skyline of lower Manhattan appears and they cross the Brooklyn Bridge. Running up the gentle slope over the East River feels like mountain climbing, but as long as Piechota’s legs are working, he’s moving toward the finish. They coast down the second half of the bridge and look toward the last five miles. 

By now it’s 4 a.m. and also, in a final racecourse hurdle, closing time for NYC bars. The sidewalks fill with staggering revelers who can’t quite make sense of what they’re seeing: an exhausted runner in a neon vest sipping from his wearable water pack, sweaty and bleeding slightly from the chin. Piechota moves into the road and the crowds thin out once they hit numbered streets. He’s closing in. 

At 34th street, emotion wells. Eight short blocks to go. Piechota passes one more runner and crosses the finish line. With the energy he has left, he throws his hands in the air and cheers when the race official announces him as the 9th place finisher. 

He flops into a camping chair, once again under the lights of Times Square. This time he’s holding a medal, exhausted and cut, but smiling and thanking everyone who helped him get back to this spot — 100 miles later.

Unger, who has been waiting up all night at home, gets the news that her friend has finished the race. Tears roll down her face as the soundtrack of that 1994 night in Piechota’s dorm room plays in her mind: “Celebrate we will because life is short but sweet for certain.” 

She falls asleep, deeply moved by the ultra power of friendship.

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