<h3>ACTIVE / FIVE BOROUGHS / NOVEMBER</h3>
<h1>ONE LINE THROUGH THE CITY</h1>
<p>The first New York City Marathon in 1970 was four laps of Central Park.</p>
<p>Six years later, the course left the park and crossed all five boroughs for the first time. In 2026, New York marks fifty years of that route.</p>
<p>It is difficult to imagine the city without the race now because the course does something unusually ambitious: it turns New York itself into the venue.</p>
<p>Staten Island is the start. Brooklyn occupies a large part of the middle. Queens arrives. Manhattan appears, gives way briefly to the Bronx, then returns for the finish in Central Park.</p>
<p>Normally these places are separated by bridges, tunnels, train lines, neighbourhood identities and the private logic of everyone's day.</p>
<p>On marathon Sunday they become consecutive.</p>
<p>One line.</p>
<p>42.195 kilometres.</p>
<p>For the runner, clothing changes completely.</p>
<p>Here usefulness wins immediately. Fabric has to work. Shoes matter for reasons far beyond silhouette. Pockets become engineering. Weather becomes strategy. A layer may exist only to be discarded before the start.</p>
<p>And yet style does not disappear.</p>
<p>Runners still choose color, proportion, socks, eyewear, caps and the small details that make standardized performance clothing feel like a person. Some disappear into black. Others become visible from three blocks away.</p>
<p>That is why this Moment belongs in a fashion magazine.</p>
<p>Personal style is easy to claim when nothing is required of it.</p>
<p>The more interesting question is what remains when almost everything has a job.</p>
<h3>ISSUE NOTE</h3>
<p><strong>TCS NEW YORK CITY MARATHON / NOVEMBER 1, 2026</strong></p>
<p><strong>50 YEARS OF THE FIVE-BOROUGH COURSE</strong></p>