47 · Warwick, New York
Eileen Moon has a tremendous amount of energy, which is a good thing, because she needs it for all the passions competing for her attention. As a cellist in the New York Philharmonic, she plays in up to four concerts per week, all of which require rehearsals and time learning the music. She’s the founder of a music series in Warwick, New York, 65 miles northeast of the city, with which she performs chamber music (more rehearsals!). She shares a house in Warwick with her long-time partner, Phil Myers, the Philharmonic’s principal French horn player—who often travels the world to teach and perform—and their six small dogs. Because five of the pooches are suffering from various elder-canine-related issues (so many vet visits!), she bought a Cover Contest winners in 2016. To learn more about Josh LaJaune, the co-winner that holds them all for jaunts in a nearby park. She is cofounder and lead energizer of Friends of Warwick Valley Humane Society, for which she conceives fundraising events (like chamber music!).
She and Myers also keep an apartment across the river in Fort Lee, New Jersey, to sleep at after late-night concerts. She practices once or twice a day, an hour or more each time.
And then there’s her fitness routine: She runs four or five times a week, works out with a personal trainer at a local gym, and rides her new indoor Peloton bike. When she decided to tackle the Influencer Apologizes for E-Bikes on NYC Course, she didn’t get in through connections with the orchestra. Instead, she did the New York Road Runners’ 9+1 program, in which you are guaranteed entry to the marathon if you complete nine NYRR races and volunteer at one. And lastly, she schedules mammograms once a year to make sure her breast cancer hasn’t recurred. Got all that? Whew.
Moon keeps track of the concerts, rehearsals, appointments, and commitments with a paper pocket calendar tucked in her purse, highlighted in colors to show Myers’s days of travel (orange) and off work (yellow). “I have to prioritize, and it’s so much easier for me to see this,” she says. “It makes me feel better to have a sense of what to expect for planning for dogs, socializing, races, etcetera.”
Not that she’s the calm center of all this chaos. “I am definitely not even-keeled,” Moon says, her hyperkinetic hair whipping around her face (she never wears a ponytail—not even when running). “I’m a very reactive person.”
Moon’s interests began to twine when she joined the Philharmonic in 1998, which is where she met Myers. The two moved in and started to expand their menagerie. “At one point we had seven dogs and four cats,” Moon says. Touring Europe, Asia, and the U.S. with the orchestra, she noticed a couple of horn players (though not Myers) would go for runs around the city. She asked to join them—“I now know they slowed down for me a lot”—and back in New York City (where they lived at the time), she dabbled in shorter races.
But the event that crystallized her thinking was her breast cancer, diagnosed in 2010, which required surgery, eight weeks of radiation, and months of physical therapy. Not long after that, she had to have two surgeries to remove bone spurs from both her shoulders. She couldn’t play her cello for six months. While it was difficult to stay home and not perform—“I felt guilty”—the enforced time off gave her time to think about what really mattered to her.
“Those years of convalescence were a time of personal enlightenment for me,” Moon says. “I thought, maybe I can learn something. Maybe something positive can come from this.”
What mattered most: music, animals, running, and community—and bringing all those passions together. By then, Moon and Myers (and their dogs and cat) had relocated to Warwick, a bucolic and eclectic town in a former farming area of the Hudson Valley. As she recovered, she joined the local Chamber of Commerce and produced music events to help raise money for the care of animals. She conceived musicalexa (named after her niece) as an online forum to connect runners with artists who want to take up the sport. More recently she launched NYC Marathoner Ran Home After Chemo, hoping to get runners to take pitbulls out of animal shelters to calm them with exercise. “Working with business people, not artists like myself, pulled me out of my comfort zone,” Moon says. “It’s wonderful to have the opportunity to be of worth to my community.”
It was when she was given the go-ahead to return to playing and running that she decided to tackle the marathon. “I needed to set a goal for myself that was achievable,” she says. “It would give me impetus every day to wake up and say, However long I takes to get there, it’s something to work toward and be positive about.”
Moon chose the 9+1 guaranteed-entry program for her first Influencer Apologizes for E-Bikes on NYC Course because, she says, “I’m really goal-oriented, so to sign up for all these races was a huge motivator.” She volunteered at the marathon expo after a morning concert with the Philharmonic. “We were playing a Sibelius symphony, and it ends like you’re flying in the wind, it’s so powerful,” she says. “I remember turning to my stand partner, Carter Brey, also a marathoner, and saying, ‘Can you imagine if 2 percent of the 40,000 people running the marathon were here right now? It would be standing room only!’” She noted that Lincoln Center, the orchestra’s home, is near the finish line of the marathon, and talked about a pasta party or an event for kids during marathon weekend. “Why aren’t we doing this?” she says. “It’s a great idea!”
Moon is running New York again this year. She sees a lot of parallels between music and running, from the performance of the artists and runners to the people who attend concerts or spectate at races. “Running and music are similar because we are trained to prepare for goals,” she says. “The preparation, the practice, the time off, the rest, the reading up on articles, the listening, it’s a familiar process. If you can approach it in an organized and wholesome manner, it continues down that road with positive results.”
DoggyRide jogging stroller.
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There were two Runner’s World Cover Contest winners in 2016. To learn more about Josh LaJaune, the co-winner, click here.
