Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The start is on the Avenue des Champs-Élysées at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe. The road drops to the Place de la Concorde and continues along the Rue de Rivoli past the Louvre, the Place Vendôme, the Opéra Garnier and the Hôtel de Ville, reaching the Place de la Bastille after a little over six kilometres. From there the route heads east into the Bois de Vincennes, where it touches its first high point of 63 metres around kilometre 18 on gently rolling park roads.

From kilometre 20 the course returns to the Seine. The quais are the lowest part of the race, dipping to 33 metres around kilometre 26, and several underpasses, the Tuileries tunnel among them, interrupt the rhythm. Notre-Dame, the Musée d'Orsay and, around kilometre 30, the Eiffel Tower line this stretch. At kilometre 34 comes the one ramp with a name: roughly 250 metres of climbing on the Boulevard Exelmans. From there the course rises gently to its high point of 67 metres at kilometre 40, crosses the Bois de Boulogne and finishes on the Avenue Foch at the foot of the Place de l'Étoile.

In numbers: 135 metres of ascent over 42.195 kilometres, 80.7 percent of the course flat, not one categorised climb. In 2026, 57,464 runners crossed the line; 2027 is the 50th edition. It is an FFA Gold Label road race, organised by A.S.O.

Pacing Strategy

On a course without climbs there is no natural brake. The opening kilometres fall gently from the Champs-Élysées to the Concorde, the field is enormous, and the Rue de Rivoli is wide enough that any pace feels effortless. Run the first ten kilometres faster than planned and you have already made this course's one big mistake, before anything has become hard.

The race-deciding section is between kilometre 30 and 36. The quais are flat and fast, but past the Eiffel Tower the road narrows and at kilometre 34 the short Boulevard Exelmans ramp arrives. It is objectively small, but it lands exactly where carbohydrate stores run thin. Budget for losing pace there, and do not try to win it straight back.

The second trap is the tunnels and underpasses along the Seine. They are short, but they swallow the GPS signal, so your watch will show wrong pace over several kilometres. Run those sections by feel and by the kilometre boards, not by the display, or you will correct a pace that was never too slow.

Training plan for Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris: 12-week build

Expect between 2:30 and 4:45 depending on your level. The demand is as even as a marathon gets: a continuously aerobic effort with no anaerobic spikes, no climbing sections and nothing technical. That makes Paris a classic personal-best course, but it moves the whole requirement onto pace durability rather than strength.

The most important session type is therefore the long run at marathon pace. A flat course punishes any uncertainty about race pace twice over, because there is no gradient to hide behind. Build sessions of 25 to 32 kilometres with long blocks at goal pace, ideally on tarmac and in the second half of the run, so you know that pace with fatigue already in your legs.

The race-deciding phase is everything past kilometre 30. Train it deliberately: finish long runs with a sustained acceleration, and close at least one session with short moderate rises after two and a half hours of running. The Boulevard Exelmans ramp is not a strength problem, but it does ask you to absorb a change of rhythm thirty kilometres in.

On conditions: mid-April in Paris usually means cool to mild temperatures, a field of around 60,000, and correspondingly dense running on the Rue de Rivoli and along the quais. Rehearse fuelling on the move and in a crowd, get used to a watch with no reliable signal in the tunnels, and train deliberately on hard tarmac rather than exclusively on soft surfaces.