Hannaford Baystate Marathon: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The start is in front of the Tsongas Center at the corner of Father Morissette Boulevard and Arcand Drive, marathoners on the left of the road and half marathoners on the right. The course runs west over Lowell's old canals - the Western, then the Northern, then the Pawtucket Canal with Pawtucket Falls off to the right. At about kilometre 2.8 comes the only ramp of the day worth mentioning, the bridge over the old B&M rail line.

From there the loop turns onto Brouilette Street and Princeton Street into Chelmsford, through Vinal Square and a little over six kilometres north-west along the river to the Tyngsboro Bridge. The course crosses to the other bank and heads back south-east, two miles of it on a grade so gentle you only notice it if you ever try the same stretch in reverse. Over the Rourke Bridge, back onto Middlesex Street, and the whole loop starts again. Only on the second lap does the route carry on to the Aiken Street Bridge, past the LeLacheur Park ballpark into Perkins and Suffolk Streets and onto Arcand Drive for the finish.

The elevation band across all of that is 20 to 37 metres above sea level; 70 metres of ascent over 42 kilometres works out at 1.7 metres per kilometre. Lowell is a nineteenth-century mill town and the course shows nearly all of it: canals, a falls, brick spinning mills, three Merrimack crossings and a finish straight beside the expo, which is also the last mile of the race. The whole thing is run entirely by volunteers from the Greater Lowell Road Runners.

Pacing Strategy

On a course that is 94 per cent flat and has no climbing at all, the terrain gives you nothing: no hill that forces you to ease off, no descent that hands you a rest. Pace has to come from your own head from the first mile to the last. That is why the eight pace groups from 2:50 to 4:00 are worth more here than at most races - they take away exactly the decision that gets made badly on flat courses.

The trap sits in the return leg of the first loop. Between the Tyngsboro Bridge and Lowell the road drops imperceptibly for two miles, and because you cannot see the grade you run ten seconds a kilometre faster for no extra effort - and file those seconds away as fitness. The second loop brings the identical stretch back, this time with 30 kilometres in your legs.

So the race is decided from about kilometre 32 to the finish, on the second pass along the same canals. Hold an even pace there and the qualifying time is yours; give away the first loop and you will find out on exactly the little rail-bridge ramp that nobody noticed the first time round.

Training plan for Hannaford Baystate Marathon: 12-week build

For a competitive age-group runner this is a three to four-and-a-half hour effort - the official pace groups run 2:50 to 4:00, which says a good deal about the field this race pulls. The demand is about as even as a marathon gets: a continuously aerobic effort with no anaerobic spikes, no change of terrain and no change of rhythm. Ninety-four per cent of the course sits in the flat gradient band and the profile contains no named climb at all.

That makes the preparation more specific rather than easier. With no climb and no descent to load the legs differently for a while, the same muscle chain works at the same angle for four hours. What limits you is muscular durability on asphalt, not climbing ability. Long runs with long blocks at goal marathon pace - two twelve-kilometre race-pace segments rather than short fast intervals - match the demand best.

The race is decided in the last ten kilometres of the second loop, and you can train that literally: run the same loop twice in a session instead of picking a fresh route each time. Baystate asks you to pass the same canal bridge a second time and hold the pace anyway. Learning to feel a barely visible grade belongs here too - a flat, slightly falling stretch in tempo work teaches you when the watch is flattering you.

Conditions work in your favour: mid-October, an 08:00 start in the Merrimack valley, cool air and a low sun - the main reason so many personal bests happen here. The one thing to plan for is the open river road on Route 113, where wind off the water has several kilometres of clear run at you; a few long sessions in wind and single-figure temperatures are worth more than any heat preparation.