How to read a course before you enter
The total climbing tells you less than where the climbing is.
Two courses with the same elevation total can demand completely different races.
- Where is the hard part? A climb at kilometer 8 costs energy. The same climb at kilometer 32 costs the race. This is the single most useful thing to know.
- How warm will it be? Past race-day conditions matter more than the profile for most runners. Heat is what most reliably turns a target time into survival.
- How big is the field? Large races cost you time and rhythm in the first kilometers. Plan to lose some.
- What is underfoot? Cobbles, tram rails and repeated tight turns are not on the elevation profile. You feel them in the last hour.
Four kinds of marathon
| Kind of course | What it rewards | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Flat and fast, cool season | Even pacing, a rehearsed food plan, and not banking time early | Berlin, Valencia, Chicago, Seville |
| Rolling city course | Running to effort rather than to pace, and strength that lasts | Barcelona, Paris, Milan, Hamburg |
| Hilly, or a late climb | Handling descents early, and patience before the hard part | Boston, New York |
| Warm, or at altitude | Adjusted expectations and a more careful plan | Los Angeles, Madrid |
These are broad families, not a substitute for the official map. Routes get changed, start areas move, aid-station spacing shifts. Always check the organizer’s site — we link it from every race page.
What actually changes in your training
Less than the race marketing suggests. More than nothing.
The core of the block — easy volume, threshold work, long runs — is the same whichever marathon you entered. Three things genuinely shift.
- Where the hard part of your long run sits. A course with a late climb needs long runs with the climbing late. A flat course needs race-pace blocks late. Same session, different placement.
- How you pace. On a rolling course, running to a fixed pace is a mistake — run to effort and let the pace move. On a flat course, the opposite.
- What you practise eating. Aid-station spacing and what is served differ by race. If you plan to use what is on the course, train with it.
What does not change: the last three weeks. Tapering works the same way whatever the course 1.
The mistake every big marathon shares
A first half faster than the training supports, and a collapse in the last third.
This has been measured across a large set of recreational marathoners, and the pattern is strikingly consistent 2.
The fix is not more willpower on the day. It is arriving with a race pace you found in training rather than picked from an ambition — and eating enough, early enough, that you can still think at kilometer 32 3.
Questions people actually ask
Which big marathon is best for a first one?
Does the course change my training much?
How far ahead should I enter?
Are the elevation figures on race websites reliable?
References
Every figure above rests on one of these studies. Author and year are enough to find the paper.
- Bosquet (2007)
- Smyth (2021)
- Burke (2019)
- Kim (2025)
