BMW Dallas Marathon: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

Start and finish are on City Hall Plaza on Marilla Street, in the middle of Downtown Dallas. The first three kilometres drop slightly, and then the day's climb begins: about fifty metres of gain spread over nine kilometres, up through the residential streets around Greenville Avenue. The high point of the course comes at kilometre twelve, immediately past the place where the field splits - at Richmond Avenue and Greenville Avenue, mile 7.8, the half marathon turns for home and the marathon carries straight on.

After that it goes quiet for a long time. From kilometre sixteen to thirty the course holds a band around 140 metres and runs through the White Rock Lake area - the flattest and loneliest part of the race. Only at kilometre thirty does it rise a second time, a little under thirty metres up to kilometre thirty-four, before dropping back through the inner neighbourhoods and entertainment districts to City Hall Plaza. The total is 157 metres of climbing; 76 per cent of the course is flat and there is no steep section anywhere.

Dallas calls this its official marathon, and the second Sunday in December is a fixture in the city: tens of thousands line the streets, the finish is in front of City Hall, and a post-race party follows. It is run by a nonprofit that has passed nearly five million dollars to Scottish Rite for Children since 1997.

Pacing Strategy

The ramp between kilometres three and twelve is so shallow that it does not feel like a climb - it still costs. Run it to pace rather than to effort and you arrive at the high point already down on reserves without having noticed. Budget a few seconds per kilometre for that nine-kilometre stretch and run it deliberately conservatively.

The real trap, though, is the split at mile 7.8. Until then you are in one big, dense field in which half the runners are working at half-marathon effort. At Greenville Avenue that field disappears and the marathon gets markedly thinner. If you have ridden that pack for the first twelve kilometres, you find out about it at exactly the moment the course turns long, flat and quiet.

The race is decided in the two sections that follow: on the entirely flat band along White Rock Lake, which gives the effort no structure at all and where pace is held by discipline alone, and on the second rise from kilometre thirty to thirty-four. Those thirty metres are nothing on fresh legs and the hardest thing of the day after thirty kilometres. Run evenly to that point and the closing eight kilometres run downhill to the line.

Training plan for BMW Dallas Marathon: 12-week build

For age-group runners the Dallas Marathon is roughly a three to five-and-a-half hour effort. The demand is a steady aerobic one with no anaerobic spikes: there is no steep section, no climb that forces a walk and equally no descent that hands back recovery. Three quarters of the course is flat, and that is exactly what makes it demanding - nothing structures the race from the outside, so the structure has to come from you.

The decisive phases are the second rise from kilometre thirty to thirty-four and the long flat stretch before it. Both ask for the same thing: holding marathon effort for a very long time without external cues, and still coping with a moderate gradient afterwards. Build long runs with marathon race effort in the final third, and put a shallow rise between kilometres thirty and thirty-five in some of them, to be run through at race effort rather than pushed.

Because the course has so little relief, cadence becomes a topic of its own. Long, straight, completely flat streets invite a long, sluggish stride; training runs on similarly featureless ground with a controlled cadence pay off directly here.

On conditions: the start is at 08:00 on a December Sunday in North Texas, which means cool and usually good running weather - but not reliably dry. The organiser's own report on the 53rd edition led with the line that a little rain could not stop the more than 28,000 finishers. Plan kit for wet weather at low single-digit to mild temperatures, and test it beforehand on a long run.