The Queensboro Bridge: An Invitation to New York City Marathon Runners

The Ed Koch Queensboro bridge has provided a connection between Manhattan and Queens for the past 108 years. As one of the major crossings of the East River into Manhattan, the Queensboro Bridge currently provides passage for almost 200,000 vehicles each day.

While perhaps not as famous as other bridges in the New York city area, such as the Brooklyn Bridge or the George Washington Bridge, the Queensboro Bridge is an important part of New York City culture. The construction of the bridge provides direct access to Manhattan from Queens and helped transform Queens from a largely rural area to a bedroom and working community. In film and literature, the bridge has become a symbol of opportunity and progress. In The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald describes the view from the Queensboro Bridge:

The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.

While the Queensboro Bridge holds an important place in history, literature and popular culture, it is also an important bridge for a unique group of people: marathoners.

During the New York City Marathon, runners cross the Queensboro Bridge just before mile 16, and it is a pivotal bridge on the course. While each crossing to a new borough is an accomplishment, this bridge takes runners to a new stage of the race. It’s not the biggest climb — the Verrazano Narrows Bridge has more elevation gain — but the location of the bridge so late in the race is daunting for many runners.

And this bridge is quiet. After fifteen miles of cheering fans, runners are faced with the quiet patter of runners’ feet. It’s almost eerie, actually.

Because of its location and lack of cheering crowds, many runners worry about this bridge and think of it as a challenge to be conquered. They dread the Queensboro bridge and how close it is to the “wall” that they are afraid of hitting.

But rather than thinking of this bridge as something to be conquered, I like to think of it as an invitation. As Fitzgerald writes, it is the first window into Manhattan, with all of its wild promises. And there are many promises, mysteries and beauties left: the crowds on First Avenue, the quick crossings into and back from the Bronx, and the last challenges of Fifth Avenue and Central Park.

Hopefully, runners have controlled their pace up until the bridge and haven’t gotten caught up in the energy of the spectacle and started too fast. Hopefully, they’re ready to accept the invitation that is the Queensboro Bridge.