Allan H Steinfeld

Allan H. Steinfeld, President and CEO of New York Roadrunners Association, and former New York City Marathon Race Director, died on Tuesday, January 24, 2017 in Allentown, PA, of multiple systems atrophy, a neurological disorder. He was 70. Allan was considered one of the founding fathers of the modern running movement. He also used his scientific background to modernize the technical operations of the New York City Marathon and then succeeded the Barnumesque Fred Lebow as the head of its parent organization.

He was the husband of the late Alice C. Schneider who died on September 24, 2016.

He is survived by two brothers, Jay Cody, husband of Laura (Winick) Cody, Tucson, AZ and Abba R. Steinfeld, husband of Carla J. (Goulet) Steinfeld, San Marcos, CA.

Allan Howard Steinfeld was born in Manhattan on June 7, 1946, to Sam Steinfeld, who worked in the import-export field, and the former Faye Litsky, a seamstress and homemaker.

He graduated from City College with a degree in electrical engineering and received a master’s degree in radio astronomy from Cornell University. While he was pursuing a doctorate at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, he was struck in his left eye by the antenna wire of a radio tower.

While teaching high school math and physics in Rye Neck, N.Y., he ran regularly in Central Park and volunteered with Road Runners.

In 1978, he took a pay cut to become Mr. Lebow’s personal assistant. In 1993, after a dozen years as technical director and Mr. Lebow’s right-hand man, Mr. Steinfeld was named the organization’s president when Mr. Lebow was being treated for brain cancer. A year later, after Mr. Lebow’s death, Mr. Steinfeld was named chief executive.

“He did not try to be Fred,” Ms. Wittenberg said. “He evolved greatly as a leader. He had a quiet fire.”

Mr. Steinfeld, who often wore a patch over his blinded left eye, was a cerebral, operations-oriented complement to Mr. Lebow, an impulsive and inspirational entrepreneur who had marketed knockoffs in Manhattan’s garment district.

“Fred would throw out all kinds of crazy ideas, and I would reel them in,” Mr. Steinfeld was quoted as saying in the book “The New York City Marathon: 25 Years” (1994), by Peter Gambaccini. “That’s what we, as a team, were all about.”

Their balance of talents was necessary for a race that, after beginning in 1970 with a field of 127 running entirely in Central Park, grew under the organization of New York Road Runners to include tens of thousands of people moving through the city’s five boroughs like a great army in shorts and bibs.

“First and foremost, Allan had a math mind,” Mary Wittenberg, who succeeded Mr. Steinfeld as the president of New York Road Runners in 2005, said in an interview. “It allowed him to look at crowd flow. One of the first things he said to me was, ‘The way I look at an event is I pretend that people are water, and what’s the rate of flow, and where will there be gaps?’ That was the lens he brought to all that he did.”

By the time he was named the marathon’s technical director in 1981, a record 14,496 runners had entered the race, increasing the need for greater efficiency.

Mr. Steinfeld found ways to improve the management of the start and finish lines, as well as to record results and register participants online. Some of the advances were done with his wife, Alice Schneider, who oversaw information technology for Road Runners. Ms. Schneider died of cancer last year.

“They were road racing’s power couple,” Peter Ciaccia, the race director of the marathon, said in an interview. “They developed systems that were in place here for over 30 years. They elevated the marathon so it could become a mass-participation event.”

Mr. Steinfeld also built a communications network along the 26.2-mile course using ham radios, Mr. Ciaccia said.

As he rode in the lead car at the 2000 marathon, Mr. Steinfeld exulted in what the race had become.

“Sometimes, New York has a World Series, if one of the teams is good,” he told The New York Times. “But this event always takes place. It is a block party for 26.2 miles.”

As a young man, Mr. Steinfeld was a sprinter. But he never became much of a marathoner. In 1966, he entered the Boston Marathon but finished short of the finish line, clinging to a telephone pole. He fared better at the Honolulu Marathon in 1979, finishing in 3 hours 27 minutes 43 seconds.

Still, according to Road Runners, he never entered the New York City Marathon.

Services for Allan will be held at a future date.

Ludwick Funeral Homes, Inc., Kutztown, is in charge of arrangements.