Two of the fastest marathon courses on earth, two very different races. Here's every stat, side by side, to help you pick.
Indicative — based on GPX data. Both courses normalised to start at 0m.
✓ marks the better number on that stat.
Chicago and New York are both massive American Majors, but the courses could hardly be more different. Chicago is flat (45m of gain) and holds both the men's (2:00:35) and women's (2:09:56) world records. New York climbs 275m across its bridges and boroughs, a route that rewards strength over raw pace and produces slower winning times as a result (2:04:58 men's course record).
Both sell out via ballot and draw fields well past 54,000. Chicago runs in early October through the Loop and a wide sweep of neighbourhoods in a single, largely flat circuit; New York runs days later in the calendar (early November) across Staten Island, Brooklyn, Queens, the Bronx and Manhattan, a genuinely different physical and emotional experience. For the fastest possible time, Chicago is the call; for the bigger, more varied course, New York.