Marathon Monday in New York: Where to Get Your Medal Engraved, Recover and Celebrate on November 2
The race ended Sunday. The medal's week starts Monday: engraving at the Central Park pavilion, a free engraving party in the Bronx, recovery zones, museum doors that open for a medal — here is the finisher's Monday, hour by hour.
Some time on Monday, most of the roughly 60,000 people who finished the marathon will do the same thing: pick the medal up, turn it over, and want their name and time on it. New York Road Runners' official Marathon Monday runs from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the marathon pavilion at Central Park and West 67th Street, where Fond Memories engraves medals for $30, payable by cash or card. The Hospital for Special Surgery runs a recovery zone alongside — that one asks finishers to sign up.
The free option is in the Bronx, and it has become a tradition of its own. Bronx Medal Monday, started by local runners, takes over the Andrew Freedman Home at 1125 Grand Concourse from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. with free medal engraving, portraits, massage, stretching and yoga — first come, first served. Midtown has its own stop: Fleet Feet hosts medal engraving and medal portraits at the Shops at Columbus Circle, on the second floor, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. And if Monday slips away, engraving continues at the NYRR RUNCENTER on Tuesday and Wednesday; the center is open Monday 9 to 5 as well, with a finisher's official time on a screen and a bell to ring for it.
The medal itself works all week. It is the 50th-anniversary edition — the largest in the race's history, struck for the fifty years since the course first took in all five boroughs — and showing it earns free general admission at the American Museum of Natural History from November 1 through 8. Grand Central Terminal runs a 'Recovery Run' of finisher offers from November 2 to 8 across participating shops and restaurants for anyone presenting a medal or bib, including a Medal Monday engraving offer on a keepsake charm.
A practical note from everyone who has done this before: the pavilion line is longest early, the Bronx party is the one that fills by word of mouth, and a medal engraved on Monday carries the time while it is still the only number in your head. The legs will complain on the stairs either way. That part is traditional too.
