TheMarathon Clinic
Course pacing

How to pace the Boston Marathon

The Boston Marathon is a genuinely hilly marathon, with about 248 m of climbing and 388 m of descent (a net drop of 140 m). Pace it by even effort, not even splits. Ease the climbs and protect your quads on the descents, or the hills will take far more than they give back.

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Abbott World Marathon MajorCommunity route dataGuide reviewed July 2026
Next Boston Marathon

Monday 19 April 2027

About 35 weeks away · 242 days · projected from the usual race weekend

Build a plan for this race

Elevation gain

248m

Elevation loss

388m

Net change

-140m

Terrain

Hilly

Typical race-day conditions

April

At the gun

9°C

~10:00am start

By the finish

12°C

warms through the morning

Humidity

55%

morning average

Conditions

Ideal

cool, fast racing weather

A thirty-year average for April, not a prediction. The real forecast appears here inside the last nine days.

Goal finish timeYour time on a cool day, with no heat allowance in it. Say whether it is a target for this course or what you are good for on flat ground, and the plan below shows what the terrain and the weather each do to it.
::
Your goal time isTwo ways to say what your number means. A TARGET FOR THIS RACE is what most runners have: the plan finishes on your time, and the hills decide how you spend it rather than how much there is. WHAT YOU RUN ON FLAT is the other way round: tell us your flat-course ability and we add what this course costs, which is how you find out what the hills are worth to you.
StrategyEven effort keeps your effort steady and lets pace drift with the terrain, slower up the climbs and faster down. Even pace holds one pace the whole way and ignores the hills. Either way the total stays the goal time you entered, so this changes where your time goes rather than how much of it there is.
Race conditionsPace for an ideal cool day, a typical race-day, or a warm-outlier year. Once race week arrives and you have a forecast, choose Set °C and enter the actual start-time temperature. Warmer conditions slow your realistic finish, and the splits below adjust to match. These figures assume shade, so a clear morning on an exposed course runs a degree or two hotter than the reading here.
AcclimatisedAcclimatised: you already train and race in conditions like these, so your body has adapted. You sweat sooner and more, hold a lower heart rate and core temperature, and barely lose time to the heat.Not yet: you mostly train in cooler weather, so a warm race hits harder, a higher heart rate, an earlier fade, and roughly twice the slowdown an adapted runner sees. It comes good after about two weeks of training in the heat.
Your race plan

3:30:34

The same effort as 3:32:45 on flat ground

Target pace

4:59/km

3:30:00 Boston +0:34 typical April = 3:30:34

▸Where that comes from
Your goal for Boston
3:30:00
Boston’s terrainshapes the splits, not the total
—
↑ climbs +3:43 (248 m)↓ descents -6:28 (388 m)

The net descent gives back about 2:45 against flat ground.

Typical April
+0:34

9°C at the gun, 12°C by the finish. +0.3% adapted.

On the day
3:30:34
Boston Marathon

Boston, Massachusetts

Hover the map or the profile, the other follows.

This one is won on the back half.

20 m40 m60 m80 m100 m120 mhalf 1:44:290 km510152025303540
km 32–33 climbs 27 m, right where most runners fade.
plan slows (give time) plan runs (take it back)each block ≈ 500 m of the course
Your race-day splits
Every
Units
MarkerTarget paceClock
1 km4:26/km4:26
2 km4:57/km9:23
3 km4:55/km14:18
4 km4:53/km19:11
5 km4:33/km23:44
6 km4:41/km28:25
7 km5:12/km33:36
8 km5:06/km38:42
9 km4:57/km43:39
10 km4:52/km48:31
11 km5:01/km53:32
12 km5:02/km58:34
13 km5:06/km1:03:40
14 km4:59/km1:08:39
15 km5:02/km1:13:41
16 km5:15/km1:18:56
17 km5:12/km1:24:08
18 km5:10/km1:29:18
19 km4:44/km1:34:01
20 km5:03/km1:39:05
21 km4:56/km1:44:00
22 km5:02/km1:49:03
23 km5:08/km1:54:11
24 km5:10/km1:59:21
25 km4:47/km2:04:08
26 km4:50/km2:08:58
27 km5:20/km2:14:19
28 km4:56/km2:19:15
29 km5:32/km2:24:47
30 km4:55/km2:29:42
31 km4:57/km2:34:39
32 km5:17/km2:39:56
33 km5:31/km2:45:27
34 km5:09/km2:50:36
35 km4:40/km2:55:16
36 km4:44/km3:00:00
37 km5:02/km3:05:02
38 km4:46/km3:09:48
39 km4:39/km3:14:27
40 km5:04/km3:19:30
41 km5:00/km3:24:30
42 km5:06/km3:29:36
Finish4:58/km3:30:34

Even-effort splits distribute your goal time by the energy cost of each gradient (the Minetti grade-cost model), not an even pace. On a course this hilly, treat the splits as a guide to ±10–15 s/km: run the climbs by feel and protect your quads on the descents. Heat builds as you go, so treat the closing 10 km as a feel check rather than a pace target.

Take it to your watch

These exact splits as a structured workout: one step per kilometre, each with its target pace band (±10 s/km). Your watch prompts every step, so on race day you run the terrain, not the arithmetic.

Garmin needs a cable and a computer. In this file: 43 steps · every km · 3:30:00 goal · even effort · typical April conditions · per-km paces. Change anything above and download again.

Getting it onto your watch

You will need a USB cable and a computer. There is no way around that: Garmin has never built a way to send a workout to a watch from a phone, from Garmin Connect, or from any file you can email yourself. Everyone who makes these files, us included, has the same constraint.

  1. Download the file above on a computer.
  2. Plug the watch in by USB and wait for it to appear.
  3. Copy the file into GARMIN/NewFiles. If your watch has no NewFiles folder, use GARMIN/Workouts instead.
  4. Eject the watch and unplug it.
  5. On the watch, go to Training, then Workouts. It will be there under the name of this race.

On a Mac the watch mounts as a media device rather than a drive, so you will need a transfer app such as Android File Transfer to see those folders. Windows shows them in Explorer.

Dragging it into Garmin Connect or TrainingPeaks will not work, and it is worth knowing why. .fit is a container that holds several different kinds of file. A recorded run uploads to both of them happily, which is what those drop zones are built for. A workout is a different file type inside the same extension, and neither platform will import one.

Train for this course, not just the distance.

A coach builds the climbs and descents into your plan, and closer to the day you can sit down with Jason and settle how you will run it.

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Where Boston is decided

Hardest km

29 km at 5:32/km

Fastest km

1 km at 4:26/km

The coach's read

Deceptive in both directions. The first 25 km drop fast and tempt you to bank time you'll pay for, hold back and protect your quads. The Newton Hills from ~26–34 km, ending with Heartbreak Hill, decide your race: run them by effort, then ride the downhill into the city.

WHY  Allowing for a typical April day, that's about 5:03/km of effort the whole way, the splits below shift with the gradient, not your pace.

Ease the climbs, let the descents run, and stay relaxed through the second half.
JHJason HuntFounder & Head Coach
Take it furtherAdjust for the heatPlan your splits
·Race-day guide

Pacing the Boston Marathon

A coach's read on how the Boston Marathon runs, and how to spend your effort across it.

01The course

Kilometre by kilometre

  • The climbing that matters: 32.3–33.4 km (+27 m at 2.4%), 28.1–29.0 km (+17 m at 1.9%), 25.7–26.6 km (+16 m at 1.8%). Run these by effort; your pace will and should slow.
  • Where you get it back: 3.8–6.0 km (-36 m down), 24.5–25.6 km (-31 m down), 0.0–0.9 km (-31 m down). Let these run without braking or hammering: relaxed, quick feet.

The one thing

This is not a course for even splits. Hold even effort, let the pace flex with the ground, and the time will look after itself.
02The plan

How to pace the Boston Marathon

  1. Read the course before race day. Point-to-point, net downhill, with the Newton Hills. Deceptive in both directions.
  2. Pace by effort, not just the watch. Set the effort you can hold for the whole marathon, then let the pace flex with the ground: a little slower up, a little faster down, the same effort throughout.
  3. Give the climbs effort, not pace. Let your pace slow on the climbs while holding effort steady; chasing your flat pace uphill is the classic way to blow up. The biggest is around 32–33 km (+27 m).
  4. Protect your quads on the descents. Stay relaxed and let the descents come to you. Hammering downhill banks a few seconds now and wrecks your legs for the closing kilometres; the model deliberately caps the downhill benefit for this reason.
  5. Plan your finish. The Newton Hills from ~26–34 km, ending with Heartbreak Hill, decide your race: run them by effort, then ride the downhill into the city.
03Questions

Boston Marathon, answered

Is the Boston Marathon hilly?
Yes, it's a genuinely hilly course, with about 248 m of total climbing over the 42.2 km and a biggest single climb of roughly 27 m. Pace it by effort, not by pace.
How should I pace the Boston Marathon?
The Boston Marathon is a genuinely hilly marathon, with about 248 m of climbing and 388 m of descent (a net drop of 140 m). Pace it by even effort, not even splits. Ease the climbs and protect your quads on the descents, or the hills will take far more than they give back.
What is the hardest part of the Boston Marathon?
The toughest climb runs roughly 32–33 km, gaining about 27 m at an average 2.4%. Deceptive in both directions.
Is the Boston Marathon a good course for a PB?
It's a hard course to set an outright personal best on because of the climbing, but pacing it by effort gives you the best possible time for your fitness on the day.
How much elevation gain does the Boston Marathon have?
About 248 m of total gain and 388 m of loss over the 42.2 km, in line with the organiser's published figures.
Race Strategy Session

The pacing above is free. The judgement is the part worth paying for.

This page knows the Boston Marathon. It does not know you. Two or three weeks out, Jason reads your last twelve weeks and spends 60 minutes going through the day with you, then writes it down so you are not running on memory.

  • An honest read on what your training says you can hold
  • How to spend your effort across this course, and where it is won
  • Fuelling and conditions, decided before you are standing on the line

A$180

One session, one race. Video call, or in person in Sydney.

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Your race is still a way off. Worth knowing about now, worth booking about eight weeks out.

From the journal

2026-07-13 · 8 min

Pace the TCS Sydney Marathon: Don't Trust the Downhill Start

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Train for Boston. Not just the distance.

A coach builds this course's climbs, descents and race-day pacing into a plan made for you.

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