AJ Bell Great South Run: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The loop starts and finishes on Clarence Esplanade in Southsea, right on the water. The opening kilometres run west around Old Portsmouth, past the Round Tower and under the Spinnaker Tower, before the course turns at around kilometre three into the thing that defines it: the Portsmouth Historic Dockyard. For one Sunday morning the field runs through a working naval base that is otherwise closed, straight past HMS Victory and the Mary Rose. That section is why people come back.

From the harbour the route heads through the city centre past the Guildhall and then across the island into the eastern residential streets as far as Eastney. This middle third is sheltered, built-up and thick with spectators, and it tempts runners into a pace they pay for later.

At about kilometre twelve the course drops onto the seafront road and stays there. The last four kilometres are completely exposed along the Solent, past South Parade Pier and Southsea Castle. The surface is closed asphalt throughout and the whole course sits in a two-to-seven-metre elevation band – 99.5 per cent of it registers as flat.

Pacing Strategy

On a course with 0.9 metres of climbing per kilometre there is no hill over which to distribute effort. This is a near-constant threshold run, and the split is dictated by wind direction rather than by gradient. The first twelve kilometres through the city and the dockyard are largely sheltered, and running them on feel almost always means running them too fast.

The race is decided from kilometre twelve onwards, on the seafront. If the wind comes off the sea or out of the south-west – as it often does on the south coast in October – the flattest part of the course becomes the most expensive one: holding pace there costs far more than it did between the buildings, and there is no corner and no wall left to hide behind.

That asymmetry is the trap. Running the first eight kilometres at or under goal pace in the shelter of the streets costs more over the final four than it gained. The workable plan is a slightly negative effort curve: stay controlled and just off goal pace through the city, and turn onto the esplanade inside a group of similar runners so the wind work can be shared.

Training plan for AJ Bell Great South Run: 12-week build

For a competitive age-group runner the ten miles take roughly 60 to 100 minutes. The demand is unusually monotonous: a steady aerobic effort at or just under threshold, with no climbs, no descents and no rhythm changes to hand out a moment's recovery. That uniformity is the real challenge of the course.

The decisive phase is the closing four kilometres on the open seafront road. It asks for the ability to hold an even pace against added resistance while already tired – physically and mentally. A runner who only trains on sheltered loops has never rehearsed that.

Conditions are the second key. Mid-October on the English south coast means cool, damp air and a wind that is almost never entirely absent on Portsea Island. Deliberate sessions in wind and rain on exposed ground – a coastline, a causeway, an open field – belong in the last six weeks, and so does settling on light, wind-resistant kit before race day rather than on the start line.

The training emphasis follows from that: threshold work in long blocks rather than hill repeats. Twenty-to-forty-minute tempo runs, cruise intervals with short recoveries, and a flat long run finished at goal pace. Strength work can concentrate on trunk and foot stability; this course never asks for climbing power.