Warm Up for 5th Avenue with These One-Mile Routes in NYC

One mile: It's 5,280 feet, or, for our international readers, 1,609.344 meters. On September 8, thousands of runners will dash down 20 blocks of Manhattan at the New Balance 5th Avenue Mile, with world-class fields of professional athletes closing out the day in the main event.

Celebrating its 39th year on the NYRR calendar, the race will once again start just outside of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and finish in the shadow of the Plaza Hotel, passing museums and cultural icons as it traces along the eastern edge of Central Park. To build excitement for race day, I've designed routes around more local landmarks—one in each borough—where you can warm up for your mile race on 5th Avenue.

Please note: Unlike the New Balance 5th Avenue Mile course, which is closed to traffic on race day, many of these routes take place on active roadways with automobile, bicycle, and pedestrian traffic. Please obey all traffic signals and yield to pedestrians when applicable. Enjoy these routes as a way to mix some fun into your regular training, and leave the racing for September 8.

Queens

For our first route, we're choosing an area that will seem rather familiar to runners who completed this summer's NYRR Queens 10K, as well as our weekly participants in NYRR Open Run: A trip around Flushing Meadows Corona Park's Unisphere.

One trip around the perimeter of the fountain measures approximately 0.22 miles, which means it will take just over four-and-a-half laps of seemingly endless left (or right) turns to complete the distance—but for those swift runners who can maintain an even pace of about 6:03 per mile, they can claim that they've gone "around the world in 80 seconds."

Route: https://www.strava.com/routes/20921603

Manhattan

If you, like me, see the Flatiron Building and can only think of Billy Eichner running around asking people questions "for a dollar" on Billy on the Street, this next route is for you.

Just as he's raced around the triangle-shaped building playing games like "It's Pitbull—No, It's Amy Poehler!" or exclaiming to passers-by that "It's Debra Messing!" you, too, can follow in his footsteps with this run. This course begins on Broadway—the same street where, according to one game participant, Denzel Washington once starred in The Phantom of the Opera—and runs south toward 22nd Street, turning right onto 5th Avenue (a different section from the one you'll be racing in September), and closing the loop with a right turn toward 23rd Street as it intersects with Broadway.

In total, one time around the block measures 0.16 miles, meaning you'll have to complete 6.25 laps before you've reached the one-mile mark. You could fit a lot of Lightning Rounds into that amount of running!

Route: https://strava.com/routes/20921656

The Bronx

In their 2018 season, the New York Yankees set a Major League Baseball record for home runs by a team in a single season with 267 trips around the base paths. For those who don't want to do the math on that one, it would add up to 18.2 miles of home runs.

As someone who grew up dreaming of playing in pinstripes, but most likely will never get that call-up from Scranton/Wilkes-Barre or Trenton, I can at least try to do the next best thing: A trip around the entire stadium.

One time around the successor to the House that Ruth Built measures approximately 0.68 miles, and happens to pass the same finish line that thousands of runners will cross later in September at the New Balance Bronx 10 Mile. If you'd like to plan your finish line to match up with that of the 10-miler, you can start your mile run closer to the intersection of East 164th Street and Jerome Avenue (outside of Gate 2, for those more familiar with the stadium's layout). I, personally, cannot tell you how best to approach this run—I'll let you be the "Judge" of that..

Route: https://www.strava.com/routes/20921773

Brooklyn

The New Balance 5th Avenue Mile finishes just outside of Manhattan's Grand Army Plaza, but for this route, we're covering ground in the other Grand Army Plaza, located right outside of Brooklyn's own Prospect Park. For this borough, we've got two options: An "inner" loop of the plaza, measuring 0.18 miles (5.55 laps to the mile), or an "outer" loop on the roadway around the plaza, measuring .55 miles (1.8 laps to the mile).

The "Inner Loop"	The "Outer Loop"

Finishers of the Popular® Brooklyn Half will feel a sense of familiarity with the outer loop—much like mile 3 on that course, the outer loop runs around the Soldiers' and Sailors' Arch, but where that route follows the road named Grand Army Plaza, this route runs along Plaza Street West and East. Runners should be aware that, unlike on race day, the streets around the Plaza will not be closed to traffic, and there are stop-light intersections along the way. If you choose to try this route, please be aware of all traffic conditions while you run, and make use of designated pedestrian lanes where applicable.

Route—Inner Loop: https://www.strava.com/routes/20921815
Route—Outer Loop: https://www.strava.com/routes/20921852

Staten Island

Last but not least, our fifth borough: Staten Island. An early idea for this route was to see how many trips up and down the deck of a Staten Island Ferry boat it would take to cover a mile. However, that length can vary depending on which boat you step aboard—it can fall between 207 feet (25.5 lengths, or 12.75 laps) and 310 feet (17 lengths, or 8.5 laps). And speaking of falling, running on a boat deck, especially one filled with your fellow passengers, is generally a pretty bad idea.

So for this route, we're moving onto dry land, to Silver Lake Park, home to another NYRR Open Run site. After running through the hustle and bustle of the Flatiron section in Manhattan, or through the never-ending turns around Queens' Unisphere, why not relax with a single one-mile loop along the water in Staten Island?

Follow the path along the southern/western edge of the Silver Lake Reservoir, and you should hit a mile once you've arrived back at your starting point. (For contrast, a loop around the path going the other direction from the Reservoir's bridge measures 0.68 miles, or 1.47 laps to the mile.)

Route: https://www.strava.com/routes/20922419

So there you have it—a one-mile run in each of the boroughs. You could stop at five or six routes, or just one. They might not be the fastest courses around, but they could throw in a nice change of pace for your everyday runs.

And if these routes have you wanting to test your true footspeed, sign up today for the New Balance 5th Avenue Mile. Race a straight line down 20 blocks of city streets and see if you can set a new personal best on September 8.