NYC Marathon Start Waves: What the Gap Is Worth in Heat
NYC's five waves start 2 hours 20 minutes apart. Our forecast prices the first-to-last wave gap at about 2 minutes of heat. Here is the math.
New York sends its runners off in five waves, and Wave 1 and Wave 5 start 2 hours and 20 minutes apart on the clock. Most advice treats the wave as a logistics question. It is also a weather question, because the morning warms while the field is still on the course. This preview asks what the gap is worth in heat, using our race-day forecast for Sunday, November 1.
Updated October 29. The forecast has cooled since we first wrote this on October 22, from a 9 AM to 1 PM average of about 61°F to about 57°F. Every number below is from the October 29 forecast. The cooler morning made the heat costs smaller, and it changed one of our conclusions: the goal no longer matters clearly more than the wave.
Five starts, 35 minutes apart
The 2026 start timeline lists Wave 1 at 9:10 AM, Wave 2 at 9:45, Wave 3 at 10:20, Wave 4 at 10:55 and Wave 5 at 11:30. Corrals close at 8:45, 9:25, 10:00, 10:40 and 11:15. They open at 8:10, 9:05, 9:45, 10:25 and 11:00. The professional women start at 8:35 AM and the professional men at 9:05, ahead of Wave 1. Start times are subject to change.
Chicago's three waves span an hour. New York's five span 2 hours and 20 minutes, so the question of what the late morning does to you has more room to matter here.
What the forecast says the morning does
Our race-day forecast starts cold and warms all the way through the start window. The hourly air temperature is 46.8°F at 7 AM, 49.5°F at 8, 52.2°F at 9, 54.9°F at 10, 56.9°F at 11, 59.1°F at noon and 61.5°F at 1 PM. It then holds near 62°F until 4 PM. Dew points sit around 35 to 38°F, so the humidity is low. Cloud cover is about 58% at 9 AM, thinning to about 46% by 1 PM.
Measured at each wave's gun, Wave 1 starts at 52.7°F and Wave 5 at 58.0°F, a difference of 5.3°F. This is the forecast as it stood on October 29. It is not an observation of what the morning will be.
The wind is light and turns through the same hours. It blows from about the northwest at 7 AM (342°) and from the southwest by 1 PM (235°), at roughly 4 to 5 mph. We do not price wind separately for each wave, so we make no claim that one wave gets more or less of it.
A little warmer than a normal New York morning
Our weather history averages the 9 AM to 1 PM hours for every edition we have scored, 24 races from 2000 to 2025. The median year sits near 54°F. This forecast averages 56.9°F over the same hours, about 3°F warmer. Seven of those 24 years averaged warmer: 2017 and 2023 at 58.8°F, 2005 at 59.4°F, 2015 at 60.1°F, 2004 at 61.7°F, 2003 at 62.9°F and 2022 at 73.0°F.
That gap between this year and a normal one is smaller than the 5.3°F between the Wave 1 and Wave 5 starts. We did not price a typical morning in this run, so we cannot say in minutes what the extra warmth costs.
What the wave gap is worth
We priced each wave with the same heat model the race page uses. For each start time and goal, it averages the forecast hours a runner is on course, weighting each hour by the time spent in it, then turns the heat penalty into minutes and seconds per mile. Here is Wave 1 against Wave 5 at three goals.
- 3:00 goal: Wave 1 loses nothing to heat. Wave 5 loses 1.3 minutes (3 sec/mi). The gap is 1.3 minutes.
- 4:00 goal: Wave 1 loses 0.4 minutes (1 sec/mi). Wave 5 loses 2.3 minutes (5 sec/mi). The gap is 1.9 minutes.
- 5:00 goal: Wave 1 loses 1.0 minute (2 sec/mi). Wave 5 loses 3.1 minutes (7 sec/mi). The gap is 2.1 minutes.
The seconds per mile are rounded to whole numbers, so they can differ by one from the minutes. Waves 2, 3 and 4 fall in between. At a 4:00 goal they lose 1.0, 1.5 and 1.9 minutes, so each later wave adds about half a minute.
The gap stays small because the afternoon levels off. At a 4:00 goal a Wave 1 runner finishes around 1:10 PM at 61.5°F. A Wave 5 runner starts 5.3 degrees warmer and finishes around 3:30 PM at 61.7°F. The two finish at about the same temperature. The late wave pays for spending more of its race in the warm part of the day, not for a hotter finish.
The goal and the wave matter about equally
Hold the wave fixed and change the goal. A Wave 1 runner pays nothing at a 3:00 and 1.0 minute at a 5:00. In Wave 5 it is 1.3 and 3.1 minutes, a 1.8 minute spread. That is about the same size as the 1.3 to 2.1 minute wave gaps above. Slower runners spend more hours on the course, so they meet more of the warm afternoon, and later waves meet it sooner.
On the October 22 forecast the goal mattered far more than the wave, because the whole morning was warm and every hour on course cost something. On a cooler morning the early hours cost almost nothing, so what matters is how much of your race falls after about 11 AM. Both a later wave and a slower goal add to that. Either way, no runner in this table loses more than 3.1 minutes to heat.
The table holds the goal fixed, but the waves are seeded by pace, so a 4:00 runner is rarely in Wave 1. In the 2025 results (we read each runner's wave from the gap between gun time and chip time) the median finisher ran 3:26 in Wave 1, 3:54 in Wave 2, 4:13 in Wave 3, 4:38 in Wave 4 and 5:23 in Wave 5. Priced on this forecast, those runners lose 0, 0.9, 1.6, 2.4 and 3.3 minutes. The typical runner in a later wave pays twice: a warmer start and more hours on the course.
What is in these numbers and what is not
Priced: the heat stress estimate the race page uses, built from air temperature, humidity, sun and wind speed in the forecast hours, averaged over the time a runner is on course.
Not priced: rain, because this run prices the heat part of the model only. Wind drag along the course, which depends on which way each mile runs, is also left out, and so are the hills and the bridges. The sky is forecast to be partly cloudy, and the sun is in the estimate. A sunnier sky than the forecast shows would add a little heat on top of these figures.
The forecast's hourly rain chance was 0 to 1% on October 29. Check the forecast section on the race page for the latest before you decide anything.
How to use this on race week
Run the wave you were given. Placement confirmations went out by email in mid-October. A runner can move to a later wave but never to an earlier one, and starting early risks disqualification. In this forecast a later wave costs a little more heat, not less, so moving later does not buy a cooler race.
Plan the first hour by effort. The forecast gains about 7°F between 9 AM and noon, and the effort you hold early costs more in the later miles. Our race pacing guide covers running by effort when the clock and the conditions disagree.
Check the forecast again the day before. The forecast moves, and the race page's forecast section follows the goal and wave you set.
These figures are the engine's price for the race-day forecast last updated October 29, 2026. They are not observed weather and they leave out rain. We will check them against the conditions on November 1 and post what we find.
In this forecast the wave is worth about 2 minutes, and so is the goal. The day is about 3°F warmer than a typical New York race morning, with low humidity, and no runner's heat cost reaches 4 minutes.
More NYC Marathon Guides
- NYC Marathon Weather History: What the race-day data shows, year by year.
- NYC Marathon Course Strategy: Mile-by-mile breakdown with pacing tips.
- NYC Marathon Start Line Guide: What to bring to Fort Wadsworth and how the waves run.
- NYC Marathon Packing List: Gear for the village, the bridge and the finish.
- New York City Marathon race page: The live forecast for your wave and goal.