Race Day · A Special Report

The Last 10K

Fifty thousand people will run 26.2 miles through New York this morning. Most of them will decide how their race goes somewhere after mile 20.

By [Reporter Name] · Photographs by [Photographer Name] · Published [Month Day, Year] · 18 min read

Mile 20 · 10:48 a.m. · Race morning

By [Writer name] · Photographs by [Photographer name]

he pace group pulled away from Maya Ortiz at the 20-mile marker, and for the first time in more than three hours she could not make her legs answer.

She had trained for this for 16 weeks. She knew the numbers: the pace on her watch, the gels in her belt, the 10:18 a mile she needed to finish under four and a half hours. None of it explained why the next step felt twice as heavy as the last one, or why the crowd at the barriers suddenly sounded very far away.

Her coach had warned her about this stretch. Somewhere after 18, he told her over coffee in September, you stop feeling like a runner and start feeling like a passenger. She had laughed at the time. Nobody around her was laughing now.

The field had thinned into a loose line of strangers, each running a private negotiation with their own legs. A man in an orange singlet stopped to stretch a calf against a lamppost. Two friends in matching shirts had stopped talking a mile back. The only sounds were shoes on asphalt and a drum line somewhere near the bridge.

A volunteer hands out water at the mile 20 aid station, where many first-time runners walk for the first time. [Photo credit]

At mile 20 the course leaves the river and starts a long, shallow climb toward the park. It is not steep. On fresh legs most runners would barely notice it. After 32 kilometres, it looks like a hill someone moved into the road overnight.

She slowed to a walk for the first time since the start line. A volunteer in a yellow vest held out a paper cup. She took it, spilled half of it down her shirt, and started running again before she had decided to.

Spectators cheering behind barriers on the marathon course

Spectators lean over the barriers near mile 21, where the course turns back toward the city. [Photo credit]

Runners have a name for this. They call it the wall, and nearly every first-timer on the course this morning will meet some version of it in the next six miles.

This is the story of those last six miles: how runners train for them, how the course is built around them, what the body burns to get through them and why a million strangers line the streets to watch.

The wall is not a myth, and it is not only in the head. Around the 20-mile mark many runners burn through the glycogen stored in their muscles and liver, and the body leans harder on fat, a slower fuel. The pace that felt easy at mile 10 suddenly costs far more effort.

What happens next depends on the months of preparation behind each runner, the shape of the road ahead and, more than most people expect, the voices at the barriers. For Maya, the next 10 kilometres would test all three.

Next part

The Course ▸

Race morning · 6:00 a.m.

Before the gun

50,000

runners, leaving in four waves from Fort Wadsworth on Staten Island

7:22

a.m., when Maya’s wave crosses the start line

10:18

the pace per mile she needs to finish in 4:30

At six in the morning the corrals at Fort Wadsworth are already filling. Fifty thousand runners pin on bibs, retie their shoes and run the math one more time. Few of them are worried about the first 20 miles. The race they are thinking about is the last 10K.

Chapter 1

The Course

Every marathon is 26.2 miles, but no two courses run the same. New York starts on a bridge, crosses five boroughs and saves its longest climb, up Fifth Avenue, for mile 23. Maya Ortiz will run every one of those miles this morning.

The elite runners at the front will cover the first half in about an hour and the second half in nearly the same time. That even split is the hardest thing in the sport to learn, and the thing most first-timers get wrong.

Her race

Mile 2 · 7:42 a.m.

Maya comes off the Verrazzano right on 10:18 a mile, though the downhill keeps asking her to go faster.

Elevation along the course

Height above river level, in feet. The steepest climb on the course comes three miles after the wall.

Hover or tap a marker on the profile to see the course at that spot.

Start

Finish, 26.2 miles

Mile 2: onto the bridge, up 60 feet

Dashed lines: halfway and mile 20

Mile 23: up 80 feet in half a mile

Illustrative profile. Replace it with the elevation chart from your race’s official course guide.

Switch between the two runners below to see how much of each race is spent in the last 10K.

Minutes spent on each stretch of the course

From the start line on the left to the finish on the right

Miles 0–6

6–13.1

13.1–20

20–23

23–26.2

Illustrative splits for a 2:05 elite and a 4:40 first-time finisher. Replace with official split data from your race.

The elite runner slows by barely a minute over the last 10K. The first-timer loses nearly 20, most of it on the climb at mile 23, where the course rises about 80 feet in half a mile.

The last 6.2 miles take up 23 percent of the elite race and 30 percent of the first-timer’s.

Marathon runners crossing a city suspension bridge

Runners cross the bridge at mile 2, the only point on the course where the whole field can be seen at once. [Photo credit]

Next part

Training ▸

The course from above

26.2 miles through New York

Scroll to fly the route from the Staten Island start to the Central Park finish. Six places along the way decide how the day goes.

Runners waiting in start corrals at dawn

Runners crossing the Verrazzano Bridge at sunrise

Runners crossing the Pulaski Bridge at halfway

Crowds lining First Avenue during the race

Tired runners crossing a bridge into the Bronx

Final stretch through Central Park in golden light

Mile 0 · Staten Island

The start corrals at Fort Wadsworth

Runners arrive hours early and wait in the cold at the foot of the bridge. The layers they shed before the start are collected and donated.

Miles 0 to 2 · Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge

The highest point comes first

The climb to the middle of the bridge is the highest ground of the day. It arrives in the first mile, when legs feel fresh and a too-fast pace feels easy.

Mile 13.1 · Pulaski Bridge

Halfway, between two boroughs

The halfway mark sits on a short drawbridge over Newtown Creek. Brooklyn ends here and Queens begins, with the Manhattan skyline across the river.

Miles 15 to 19 · Queensboro Bridge to First Avenue

A quiet climb, then a wall of noise

Spectators are kept off the Queensboro Bridge, so the only sound is footsteps. Then the ramp drops onto First Avenue and into some of the biggest crowds on the course.

Mile 20 · Willis Avenue Bridge

Into the Bronx, where races come apart

The course spends about a mile in the Bronx. For many runners this is where fuel runs low and a planned pace starts to slip.

Mile 26.2 · Central Park

The last turn to the line

After a long, gradual climb up Fifth Avenue, the course enters the park, rolls along its southern edge and finishes near Tavern on the Green.

Mile 0 of 26.2

Fort Wadsworth, Staten Island

Miles 0 to 2 of 26.2

Staten Island → Brooklyn

Mile 13.1 of 26.2

Brooklyn → Queens

Miles 15 to 19 of 26.2

Queens → Manhattan

Mile 20 of 26.2

Manhattan → The Bronx

Mile 26.2 of 26.2

Central Park, Manhattan

Five boroughs, one line

Somewhere around mile 20, it gets hard.

Skip the flyover ↓

By the numbers

Seventy-five years of chasing two hours

Maya is aiming for 4:30, or 10:18 a mile. The current men’s record works out to about 4:36 a mile, less than half her pace, and the fastest marathoners keep closing in on a line nobody has crossed in a race. Since 1947, the men’s world record has fallen by 25 minutes. Since 1971, the women’s has fallen by more than 36. Each column shows how far a record stood above two hours. Switch between the men’s and women’s records, and hover over or tap a column to see the time.

Marathon world record, minutes above two hours

2:25:39

2:20:42

2:18:40

2:17:39

2:15:17

2:14:28

2:12:11

2:09:36

2:08:33

2:08:18

2:07:12

2:06:50

2:06:05

2:05:42

2:04:55

2:03:59

2:03:38

2:02:57

2:01:39

2:00:35

Sub-2?

’47

’52

’53

’54

’58

’63

’64

’67

’69

’81

’85

’88

’98

’99

’03

’08

’11

’14

’18

’23

2:46:30

2:43:54

2:38:19

2:34:48

2:32:30

2:27:33

2:25:42

2:22:43

2:21:06

2:20:47

2:20:43

2:18:47

2:17:18

2:15:25

2:14:04

2:09:56

’71

’74

’75

’77

’78

’79

’80

’83

’85

’98

’99

’01

’02

’03

’19

’24

A selection of record-setting runs. The orange column marks the current record: 2:00:35 for men, set in Chicago in 2023, and 2:09:56 for women, set in Chicago in 2024. Both charts use the same scale. Compiled from memory of World Athletics records, which treat women-only and mixed races separately: verify each time and year before publishing.

The record has dropped in jumps: faster shoes, better pacing, deeper fields. In 2019, Eliud Kipchoge ran 1:59:40 in a specially staged event with rotating pacers, but it did not count as a record. The open question is whether anyone can do it in a real race.

The road to 2:00

Five runs that moved the line

The chart above shows every record. These are the runs that changed what people thought a human could do. Scroll through them and watch the gap to two hours close.

1947 · Boston