He’s got wings.
A Long Island escape room owner and fitness buff set a stunning record by running from Buffalo to the Brooklyn Bridge in 8 days and 13 hours, shattering a previous record for the 572.55-mile journey by nearly a day.
“It just takes a couple of steps and a whole lot of time to be able to accomplish your goals,” Ryan Clifford, 28, told The Post while recovering Wednesday after crossing into NYC the night prior.
“As long as you have time, you can get from point A to point B,” added the Seaford resident, who co-owns Ryco’s Escape Room & Lounge in Westbury.
Clifford battled all elements from heatwaves to this week’s nor’easter while trekking through asphalt, cinder, and dirt on the Empire Trail — which had fully connected his route from the Queen City to the Big Apple eastbound to Albany and then south through the Hudson River Valley.
“The third day, the big hurdle was through Syracuse,” he said, adding that intense hot weather was mixed with intermittent scattered showers while in Western New York.
“I’d be soaking wet, and then I’d be drying out in the sun. Then at the end of the day, it poured on me for like three hours getting to the finish.”
None of that, though, deterred the man who ran for MacArthur High School, attended Mansfield University in Pennsylvania, and later coached at Minot State University in North Dakota from reaching his goal, which had been three years in the making.
The iron man — he’s previously run from Brooklyn to Montauk — tried the cross-state trip in 2022 but “had to throw in the towel” a painful 80 miles from the finish line in Hopewell Junction after shin inflammation on his sixth day of the challenge.
“It’s been haunting me ever since. I wanted to really go back out there and prove to myself that I can finish what I started.”
He trained extra hard this time to not just finish, but also outdo the May 2024 set record of nine days and 11 hours. The previous milestone was set by Matthew VosBurgh, a New York City-based rugby player and ultramarathoner who helped launch the running wear line Bakline in 2008.
VosBurgh had tried keeping a pace of 70 miles per day during his adventure, which was the exact amount Clifford began running per week last August in training.
Clifford increased that number to 200 weekly miles just before his October adventure, where family and friends joined him — plus even a stranger in the city — at different stretches.
The long-distance guru notched nearly 90 miles in 16 hours on the first day from Buffalo to Rochester and was keeping up a pace of about 60 to 76 miles a day through thick and thin past Albany.
Clifford’s shins were once again in excruciating pain by that point, and by day seven, the daily plan of running from Red Hook upstate to Fishkill was no longer an option.
“I could not run if I tried,” he said.
Haunted by the futulity of 2022, and realizing this would probably be his last ever attempt, Clifford wouldn’t take no for an answer.
“I was like, you know what? If I can’t run, I’m going to walk the rest of the way to Brooklyn. So I ended up walking 43 miles that day.”
The reward he received for persevering was being drenched in Monday’s Nor’easter while speed walking through Westchester around Mount Kisco.
“That was a fun day as well,” Clifford joked.
Finally, the home stretch came as he mustered the strength to run the final few miles through the Bronx and later Manhattan while accompanied by his dad, John, and brother Kevin, as he crossed the Brooklyn Bridge late Tuesday evening.
“It was almost like a sense of relief that, ‘Wow, I don’t have to keep moving forward anymore,’” Clifford, who will be honored by Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman on Thursday, said.
“I felt like my demons had been conquered to get that goal I was shooting for.”
Clifford has plans for another gargantuan, 250-mile run from Phoenix to Flagstaff, Arizona, in May, but for now it’s back to work.
“I’m giving myself today off, but Thursday I will be at the escape room,” he said. “And, I’ll probably be on my feet all day.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
