Wow: The 50th New York City Marathon Has Been Canceled

In the latest big-name marathon to cancel this fall due to the coronavirus, the New York City Marathon has just announced that they will cancel their 50th edition of the famed race.

The 50th New York City Marathon Has Been Canceled

As we saw earlier this year, marathon organizers struggled over the decision to cancel, postpone, or keep their races intact. All the big marathons (except the LA Marathon) canceled or postponed their races. For fall marathons, the postponement is less of an option since it is a bad idea to plan such a race for winter months.

Now, the New York City Marathon has cancelled what would have been their 50th edition of the race that winds its way through all 5 NYC boroughs.

The timing of this cancellation is definitely planned – it is just about 18 weeks from the start of the race. This means that most runners would start training programs this week or in the next couple of weeks for this race. Now, they do not have to commit to a particular race cycle and can plan to do something different.

The organizers said that they will be in touch with entrants by July 15th with options, which will include refunds. The NYC Marathon website with information for entrants is currently getting slammed with people trying to find out what is going on.

Here are the options that are available:

1. Refund of 2020 entry fee
2. Guaranteed complimentary entry to the 2021 TCS New York City Marathon
3. Guaranteed complimentary entry to the 2022 TCS New York City Marathon
4. Guaranteed complimentary entry to the 2023 TCS New York City Marathon
5. Donate the value of your entry fee to support NYRR’s free youth and community programs

It should be noted that if you take the refund, that decision cannot be reversed. Visit this site to see all the answers to your questions.

While definitely not an easy decision, especially since no one knows what kind of situation we may be facing in a few months, I think it was a smart one to make it before training starts for everyone.

I will try to make a list of some alternatives for around that time for those still wanting to run a fall marathon – although I realize there is only one NYC marathon!