New York Marathon

The course

An Abbott World Marathon Major.

Five boroughs, five bridges, and it opens with the largest climb of the day. From Fort Wadsworth the course goes up and over the Verrazzano-Narrows, exposed, nothing to shelter behind, then descends into Bay Ridge. What follows is eleven miles of Brooklyn: Fourth Avenue, wide and flat through Sunset Park and Park Slope; Lafayette Avenue and Bedford-Stuyvesant; then Bedford Avenue north through Williamsburg and Greenpoint. The Pulaski Bridge carries you into Queens and marks halfway. Long Island City is brief. The Queensboro Bridge is not: a mile of lower deck, no spectators, no sound, only footsteps, and then First Avenue opens like a door. The long straight north through the Upper East Side and East Harlem is deceptive: it climbs the whole way. Over the Willis Avenue Bridge, the steepest pitch on the course, for a short loop of the Bronx, back across the Madison Avenue Bridge into Harlem. Fifth Avenue is the hard part: a steady rise along Central Park's edge. Into the park at 90th Street, south on East Drive, out at Grand Army Plaza and west along Central Park South, back in at Columbus Circle, and the finish on West Drive near Tavern on the Green.

Start

Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island, at the approach to the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge

Finish

Central Park, West Drive at West 67th Street, near Tavern on the Green

Shape

point-to-point

Terrain

Rolling and bridge-driven rather than hilly. The Verrazzano-Narrows in the first two miles is the biggest single climb (150+ feet); Brooklyn is largely flat and fast; the Queensboro Bridge at miles 15–16 is a sustained rise of around 100 feet; First Avenue climbs gradually; the Willis Avenue Bridge at around mile 19.5 is the steepest pitch on the course, over 6%; Fifth Avenue grinds upward from roughly mile 22 to 23.5; Central Park rolls to the finish.