Here are the start times for each division:
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8 a.m. Professional wheelchair division
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8:22 a.m. Handcycle category and select athletes with disabilities
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8:40 a.m. Professional women
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9:05 a.m. Professional men
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9:10 a.m. Wave 1
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9:55 a.m. Wave 2
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10:40 a.m. Wave 3
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11:20 a.m. Wave 4
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12 p.m. Wave 5
There are few places without spectators along the 26.2-mile route. Here’s our full guide on where to watch the race, borough by borough.
If you’re looking for an easy transit option from across the city, go to the intersection of Fourth Avenue and Flatbush Avenue in Brooklyn, served by the B, D, N, Q, R, 2, 3, 4 and 5 trains.
If you’re looking to make a big impact on the runners, go to the Bronx. The race’s 20-mile mark, around 135th Street and Alexander Avenue, is a notoriously challenging part of the race where runners may hit the proverbial “wall.”
If you’re the kind of person who likes a crowd to cheer with, First Avenue from 59th Street to 96th Street in Manhattan is always lined with spectators, especially with all the bars and restaurants on this part of the course.
The marathon is broadcast live on ESPN2 nationally (8:30-11:30 a.m. Eastern time) and WABC-TV, Channel 7 locally (8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Eastern).
You can stream those broadcasts in the ESPN app nationally and WABC’s app locally.
The race is also broadcast on a variety of global networks, listed here.
After a year’s hiatus, the New York City Marathon returns Sunday morning in plenty of its glory.
As dawn breaks, tens of thousands of participants will descend on Fort Wadsworth in Staten Island and wait for the sound of the cannons that will send the fast and the slow, those on two legs, or one, or none at all, or in wheelchairs, over the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge for the start of the 26.2-mile journey to Central Park.
Because of the pandemic, this 50th running of the marathon is a smaller affair than usual, with roughly 30,000 participants instead of the usual stampede of more than 50,000. But after a year when mass running events all but disappeared, that feels like a mere detail. A throng of humanity will once more venture through five boroughs, chasing a coveted finisher’s medal, in front of hundreds of thousands of family, friends and strangers, while trying to grasp something else as well — a New York that existed before that is slowly rising again.