Information on The ING New York City Marathon Course

New York Marathon course includes almost every type of challenges one can imagine: from an uphill start followed by a downhill leg, to straight segments that allow the runner to pick up the pace, to winding course segments that require the runners to carefully follow the tangential paths that provide the shortest run through those winding curves.

The New York Marathon course goes over five bridges, and five (Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx, and Manhattan) boroughs. The marathon starts on the Staten Island section of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, goes through Brooklyn and Queens, into Manhattan and then up to the Bronx. The Marathon then ends in Manhattan near Tavern on the Green in Central Park.

Many runners rate the ING New York City Marathon course to be tougher than most marathon courses. You will be climbing uphill as you navigate through the five bridges, followed by a downhill run for up to a mile. Then there are several other ramp-ups of moderate gradients ranging from about as little as a quarter mile incline to more than half a mile (in addition to the bridges) of ramp-up.

What make this marathon course even more challenging are the relatively small inclines during the last 3 miles of your run. The incline that starts around 110th Street on Fifth Avenue, continues to increase gradually until you reach 90th Street turn into Central Park. This climb, even though it involves only a moderate incline, lasts about a full mile and could pose quite a tough challenge. The hills that await you as you continue your run to the finish line, and the uphill (which is more than a modest ramp-up) during the last quarter mile makes most of the runner to summon every last drop of energy they may have conserved in their leg muscles.

New York Marathon course requires the runners to cut tangents through many turns. Runners that fail to traverse along the perfect tangent at any of those many turns is bound to have run more than 26.2 miles. Those turns not only increase the total distance that most runner have to run, they also make the course "slower" considering it usually takes longer to run a course that has many turns than the time needed to run the same distance along a straight path.