New York City

city · earth

A city of five boroughs on a drowned river mouth, most of it on islands, which is the fact that shapes its marathon. Because Staten Island, Brooklyn and Queens, Manhattan and the Bronx are separated by water, a route that visits all five must cross bridges, and a bridge is a hill with no run-up. The 1970 race was confined to Central Park because closing the city was not yet imaginable; the 1976 five-borough course was a political achievement before it was a sporting one, and it established the template of the marathon as a municipal event that shuts a city for a day. It is a canonical city object and is not defined by the marathon.