New York City Marathon
There is no race on earth quite like running through a city that genuinely stops for you. From Staten Island to Central Park, the crowds never quit, and neither, somehow, do you.
The course.
Race-day weather.
Typically cool and crisp in early November, with highs near 58°F and lows in the mid-40s°F. Skies are partly cloudy with a ~25% chance of light rain; wind is noticeable at around 14 mph.
Entry.
The primary entry path is an annual lottery (drawing) that opens in early February; results are announced in early March. Guaranteed entry is also available via NYRR's 9+1 program (run nine NYRR races and volunteer at one), time-qualifying standards, charity fundraising with an official charity partner, or an international tour operator package.
Register on race siteLogistics.
LGA, 8 mi from the start.
From the community.
Race history.
The New York City Marathon was founded in 1970 by Fred Lebow — born Fischel Lebowitz, a Holocaust survivor and obsessive runner — as a four-lap race around Central Park with a $1 entry fee, a $1,000 budget, and 55 finishers from a starting field of 127. Six years later, to celebrate the U.S. bicentennial, longtime running advocate Ted Corbitt proposed routing the race through all five boroughs. Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton and Mayor Abraham Beame backed the idea, Lebow ran with it, and what was meant to be a one-time stunt became the permanent course.
That route — Verrazzano Bridge, through Brooklyn, Queens, the Queensboro into Manhattan, up to the Bronx, and finishing in Central Park — is the reason the New York City Marathon is what it is. The course is hilly, late fall weather can swing wildly, and personal bests are rare; what runners come for is the city itself, lining the streets in numbers no other marathon can match. With more than 50,000 finishers and roughly two million spectators, it is one of the largest marathons in the world by participation. For a generation of American runners, the NYC Marathon is the cultural marathon — less about the stopwatch than about the borough-by-borough pilgrimage Lebow built.
First run in 1970. Roughly 59,226 finishers in a recent edition.