There are a lot of things to love about New York City. We often write about the early mornings in Central Park, beautiful fall adventures, and the incredible cycling community, to name just a few. But we have never really written about the joy of holiday celebrations in New York City. From the fireworks of the Fourth of July to the balloons for Thanksgiving, New York City generally knows how to do a good holiday celebration*. However, the best holiday in New York City technically isn’t a holiday at all. It’s the first Sunday in November when 50,000 odd folks cross all five boroughs as part of the New York City Marathon. This is the one day of the year that manages to transform a huge swath of the city into a proper celebration. From the dance parties to the musical acts, marathon Sunday is NYC’s best not-a-holiday holiday and arguably the best day to be in New York City all year.

Last year, we cracked the code on what we think may be our favorite way to spend marathon Sunday. So for this year we decided to repeat it, starting with another early morning crisscrossing the city as course setup was underway. Our destination was the foot of the Verrazzano-Narrows Bridge, where we would start our duty as cyclist escorts for the professional wheelchair races. Having a front row seat to these impressive athletes while riding the marathon course was once again a privilege and a true bucket list item (even if we technically already crossed it off). From there we returned to the Upper East Side where the usual marathon block party was just getting going. Open container laws were flagrantly ignored, giant fathead signs were held aloft, and plenty of cheers were on offer — including for TBD’s own Corey Morenz who paced out a blistering 3:05 marathon.

In a perfect world, marathon Sunday would be an actual holiday with Monday off work, so we could continue festivities well into the night and sleep in tomorrow morning. But even without full fledged holiday status, marathon Sunday is a special day and definitely one of our favorite days in New York City.

*Note: New Year’s Eve is excluded from this list as it is usually frigid, crowded, and overpriced.