Edinburgh Marathon Festival: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The opening kilometres are a tour of the city and, at the same time, the entire elevation loss of the day. From Potterrow in front of the university's McEwan Hall the route passes Greyfriars Kirkyard, crosses the Royal Mile between St Giles' Cathedral and Edinburgh Castle, drops down the Mound into the New Town and runs through Princes Street Gardens past the Scott Monument. Back up on the Royal Mile you go by the Scottish Parliament and the Palace of Holyroodhouse with Arthur's Seat and the Salisbury Crags above you. By kilometre 8 you have come down from 95 metres to barely four above the sea.

After that the character changes completely. The route reaches the coast along Portobello promenade, passes the oldest golf course in the world at Musselburgh and carries on east through Prestonpans, Cockenzie and Port Seton. At kilometre 29.5 it turns into the grounds of Gosford House, doubles back and takes the same coast road home. The last 30-odd kilometres sit between one and thirteen metres above sea level, 84 per cent of the course reads as flat in the profile, and there is not a single sustained climb anywhere on it.

That is what makes the second half more honest than the profile looks. The road along the Firth of Forth is open, with no shade and no shelter, and in late May the wind here usually comes off the water. The finish is not a stadium but the playing fields of Pinkie St Peter's Primary School in Musselburgh: a marathon that starts between a castle rock and a cathedral and ends on grass by the sea.

Pacing Strategy

The race is set up in the first eight kilometres. Run the long descent out of the city too cautiously and you give away time; run it too hard and you give away muscle. The sensible answer is a shade under goal pace with short, high-cadence steps rather than long braking strides. Otherwise your quads present the bill from kilometre 30 onwards, on a stretch where no gradient is left to help you.

From kilometre 9 the terrain gives you nothing. For more than 30 kilometres the course stays at one level, so it is one pace, one cadence, no surges. The race-deciding section is the return from the turn at Gosford House, kilometre 29.5 to the finish: the same road you ran the other way an hour earlier, now on tired legs and with nothing new to look at.

The real trap is the wind. If it pushes you on the way out, kilometres 15 to 29 feel too easy and the way back collects the debt. Run the coastal section on effort rather than on the watch, and stay disciplined about sitting in a group. On a straight, open road, shelter is the single biggest time saving still available to you.

Training plan for Edinburgh Marathon Festival: 12-week build

For a committed age-group runner this is a three to four and a half hour effort; the organiser's limit is 6 hours 30. The demand is about as evenly aerobic as a marathon gets: after the descent there is no climb, no direction change that costs speed, no surging. It asks for less strength endurance than most marathons and far more of the ability to hold one pace for hours.

Two sections deserve targeted work. The first is the eight-kilometre descent at the start. Downhill running is an eccentric load, and if you have never trained it you reach the coast with your quads already damaged. Put long, moderate downhill stretches on tarmac into the first third of your long runs rather than short steep drops. The second is the return from kilometre 30, where you have to hold race pace on flat ground with nothing carrying you: long runs finishing with blocks at marathon pace reproduce exactly that.

The conditions belong in the same plan. Late May on Scotland's east coast is rarely hot but almost always windy, and the whole second half runs unsheltered along the Firth of Forth. Train long sessions into a headwind on open roads and get used to running on effort rather than pace when it blows. With a 10:00 start you also need a rehearsed breakfast and fuelling routine for a long morning before you run a step.

So: volume with long runs up to two to two and a half hours, marathon pace as a sustained stimulus rather than an interval, eccentric preparation for the city descent, and wind rather than heat acclimatisation. Threshold work still has its place, but on this course it is not the decisive tool.