13 New York Half Marathons You'll Love Running
From Brooklyn to Cold Spring to Corning, and from Manhattan to Ithaca, Queens and Albany, road and trail half marathons for 2025 and 2026
United Airlines New York City Half Marathon
New York, N.Y. | Sunday, March 15, 2026
One of those “must run” races, the NYC Half brings more than 20,000 runners onto the streets of Manhattan as winter is giving away to spring, starting at the northern entrance to Prospect Park and ends on Central Park’s West Drive after a counterclockwise loop around the park, but not before taking you across the Brooklyn Bridge, past Rockefeller Center and through Times Square. Since it’s the spring, the scenery is a lot less green and lush than it would be in the summer — the leaves aren’t yet on the trees, but that lets you see more of the buildings, museums and high rises along the route through the park.
RBC Brooklyn Half Marathon
Brooklyn, N.Y. | Saturday, May 16, 2026
A gorgeous, scenic urban run through many of Brooklyn’s most famous sights and attractions, including Prospect Park, the New York Aquarium and the Coney Island boardwalk, where you’ll finish the race overlooking the beach. Organized by the New York Road Runners, which also puts on November’s iconic New York City Marathon, this race is fast and largely flat, starting from the Frederick Law Olmstead-designed Prospect Park, whose history dates all the way back to the Civil War era (it was built in the late 1860s), and today it is an urban oasis of huge green meadows, trees, forests and lakes in the midst of one of the densest cities in the U.S.
Cayuga Trails 50
Ithaca, N.Y. | Saturday, May 30, 2026
A gorgeous, challenging run through Ithaca’s Robert H. Treman State Park — a place whose 1,100 acres are filled with miles of single-track trails, a dozen waterfalls, mountain gorges and stream-fed pools, some of which you’ll trek through on the course — this race features both a 50-miler and a 50K. Participants are allowed to bring hiking poles with them on the course, which is 95 percent trails, including some sections of historic stone stairs and (probably slippery) stone sections along stream beds, as well as thick forested stretches with tree canopy covering you all around.
Gorges Ithaca Half Marathon
Ithaca, N.Y. | Sunday, June 7, 2026
A land filled with forests, rail trails, lakeside stretches and plentiful waterfalls — that’s what awaits runners at this half, which shifts from its usual June running to September this year on a course organizers describe as “one of the fastest and most scenic half marathons you’ll ever run. Period.” The out-and-back route for the race begins in downtown Ithaca, N.Y., which if you’ve read your Homer you will remember Odysseus — the hero of the epic poem The Odyssey — who hails from the Greek island of Ithaca and from there he spent the entire story trying to get back. After that, you’ll run along the Cayuga Waterfront Trail, where the scenery changes from farmland to towering canopies of trees, as well as the sounds of water falling through the numerous ravines and waterfalls you’ll see along the way.
Fabulous Fahnestock Trail Races
Cold Spring, N.Y. | Saturday, August 16, 2025
A gorgeously scenic run through Clarence Fahnestock Memorial State Park, whose 14,000-plus acres in New York’s Hudson Valley feature trails where you’ll “climb up long hills, run past lakes and ponds, and along old dirt roads and abandoned rail beds, with an optimal amount of single track,” organizers say, adding that its “varied landscape includes hemlock gorges, bald ridge hilltops, second-growth hardwood forest, mountain laurel thickets, and numerous lakes, ponds and streams.” You can go as hard or as easy as you like, with distance options from 5 1/2 miles to 25 or even 50 kilometers.
Dutchess County Classic
LaGrangeville, N.Y. | Sunday, September 28, 2025
Just over one-and-a-quarter miles across the Hudson River between the towns of Poughkeepsie and Highland, N.Y., the footbridge known as the “Walkway Over the Hudson” will be part of this fast, flat course you’ll get to run under miles and miles of dense tree cover in New York’s Hudson Valley region. The shade comes from the trees along the Dutchess Rail Trail, on whose tracks the old Central New England Railway rambled and clattered along starting back in 1892. The out-and-back race is run mostly on asphalt-surface trails, with some hard-packed sand, and is mostly flat throughout.
Wineglass Marathon + Half Marathon
Corning, N.Y. | Sunday, October 5, 2025
A scenic fall run through the wine country of New York’s Finger Lakes region, on a fast, gradual downhill course that unfolds largely along the winding Chemung River and organizers say is “one of the top spots to qualify for the Boston Marathon.” You’ll run through quaint neighborhoods and past farm fields along the river, including a few crossings over bridges as you make your way from Bath, N.Y., to nearby Corning, where you’ll finish on Market Street.
Fall Foliage Half Marathon
Rhinebeck, N.Y. | Sunday, October 12, 2025
Timed to start just weeks before — and serve as the perfect tune-up run for — November’s New York City Marathon, this race unfolds along the streets and country roads of this small village in New York’s Hudson River Valley, when the leaves are turning bright gold, orange and red. The early and middle miles of the half feature some of its most scenic terrain, as they’ll take you along the banks of the Hudson River (or within shouting distance of it). You’ll also get to sleep in a little more than you do at most races — this one has a 8:30 a.m. start time.
Mohawk Hudson River Marathon + Half Marathon
Albany, N.Y. | Sunday, October 12, 2025
One of the most forgiving courses you’ll ever run, on the trails that wind alongside the Hudson River between a small city named Cohoes and the finish at a riverside park in New York’s capital city of Albany. The first four miles of the half marathon — which is the second 13.1 miles of the event’s full marathon — follow a gentle descent from the stretch of the course along the Mohawk River to the Hudson, and then it’s flat all the way in to the finish line at Jennings Landing park. You’ll run mostly on paved bike trails, with a few city streets thrown in, and it’s considered a great race for first-time half marathoners.
Paine to Pain Trail Half Marathon
New Rochelle, N.Y. | Sunday, October 12, 2025
Inspired by the author of Common Sense, one of the most influential Revolutionary-era pamphlets in American history, this looping trail half starts at the Thomas Paine Cottage and then takes runners into the woods of five area parks. You’ll spend most of the run on dirt trails, trekking over rocks, roots, stumps, mudholes and fallen trees — and you’ll run across a number of wooden catwalks scattered throughout the trails, which may be in disrepair, slippery or damaged by other runners crossing over them. In fact, organizers say, there are “plenty of risks of running this event that we like to consider features of the trail and the race.”
Falling Leaves Half Marathon
Brooklyn, N.Y. | Saturday, October 18, 2025
A gorgeous, three-loop run that unfolds entirely within the leafy, tree-lined confines of Brooklyn’s Prospect Park, this run features three loops around East and West Drive inside the iconic 585-acre park, designed back in the 1860s by the legendary landscape architect Frederick Law Olmstead. You’ll get to take everything the park has to offer in as you run around it — from its lakes, trails and meadows to its carousel, sea lion pool and zoo, and the Prospect Park Audubon Center. The terrain for the race is almost entirely flat and run on paved surfaces throughout, and you’ll finish along Center Drive in the center of the park.
Sri Chinmoy Half Marathon
Congers, N.Y. | Sunday, October 26, 2025
What organizers say is the “perfect” race for a PR follows a fast, flat four-loop course around Rockland Lake State Park just outside New York City, part of a series of races that were first organized in the late 1970s and named in honor of the Indian meditation master and philosopher Sri Chinmoy. Runners will start the race on the western side of the lake, just off Rockland Lake Road; from there, they’ll follow a clockwise loop around the lake four times. Local runners will likely be familiar with the park’s plentiful hiking trails, which wander through the woods of this park along the western bank of the Hudson River, less than an hour’s drive from New York City.
Sri Chinmoy New Year’s Day Half Marathon
Queens, N.Y. | Thursday, January 1, 2026
Run through one of New York City’s iconic parks at this (probably cold!) race, which will unfold inside Flushing Meadows Corona Park, perhaps best-known as the home of the U.S. Open tennis tournament and the site of two World’s Fairs back in the early and mid-20th century. You’ll run a fast, flat route past several of the park’s best-known monuments, like its Unisphere — commissioned for the New York City World’s Fair back in 1964 — as well as baseball’s Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, and the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center.
