This race jumped out to me because the idea of running a race in Central Park sounded pretty awesome. The Fred Lebow 13.1 lived up to the hype and I will certainly do this race again at some point in my life.

Let's start on race day morning. Due to having a young one at home, I decided to forego getting a hotel in NYC the evening before the race and making the 2 hour drive from the Philly area the morning of. This ended up being doable but I will say it was pretty close timing wise. It took me longer to park and find the race then I expected. There are streets with free weekend parking a few blocks away from the Central Park entrance that I was able to find in about 10-15 minutes of circling around. I ended up being able to walk from my parking spot to the race in about 15 minutes.

Once I got into Central Park it was a bit difficult to navigate to the registration tents with the sea of people going to bag check and getting in lines for their corrals. Overall there were plenty of volunteers and things were well organized. Just give yourself plenty of extra time to get into your corral. The race bib pickup was extremely well organized and moved quickly.

There was no Expo for this event, but this race still gets a 5 for SWAG due to the amazing winter hat the race provided BEFORE the event (pictured). I love that. It was freezing so I actually wore it for the first half of the race and chose to lose an outer layer. It ended up being a good call as the weather warmed up significantly as the sun came up.

The course is extremely fun. The rolling path winds through Central Park and you get to explore familiar sights you have seen in countless movies. It really is very entertaining and is one of the most scenic courses I've run on. With that said, you do end up doing 2 loops which I enjoy for focus but loses some of the scenery appeal in the second half.

I will put this simply... if you do not like hills, do not run this race. The entire course is rolling hills and Harlem Hill is a MONSTER. Do not underestimate this hill. In this case, the course was changed due to ice and we had to climb it a third time at the end of the race. It made for a challenging course that broke some runners (including myself) down to a walk and complaining loudly that we actually had to go up this thing a third time.

Once the race finished you get all the typical NYRR fanfare which includes as many food options as you could possibly want. There is an after party of sorts that I did not stay for this time around, but it seemed like there was a large number of people who stayed to socialize after the event.

Overall, this was a fun race because of the amazing rolling course and beautiful scenery in Central Park. Highly recommend this one if you have never run in NYC, it's a great experience for any level runner.

Marathon Ryan
@marathonryan