Remmers-Hasetal-Marathon: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The gun goes at 17:00 on the Südtangente by the K+K supermarket, the race is two laps of the DLV-measured 21.098 kilometre circuit, and the finish is on the market square in the centre of Löningen. The lap leaves town to the north on the Werwer Weg, crosses the Werwer Fuhren woodland, runs the Geest flats on both banks of the Hase through the villages of Evenkamp, Ehren and Angelbeck, and comes back into Löningen along Unterm Ufer and the Hase dyke. Roughly half the circuit follows the Hasetal cycle path, the rest uses country roads and farm tracks, all of it surfaced.

The profile is remarkably monotonous, and here that is a compliment: 63 percent of the course is flat, there is not one steep section in either direction, and the 207 metres accumulated over two laps consist of bridge ramps and dyke accesses a few metres high. The course is DLV-measured and eligible for the German best lists, and the event is certified as a three-star race by European Athletics.

The evening gives it its character. The marathon is staged as a summer evening running festival: a dozen feed and motivation stations are run by village communities, clubs and neighbourhood associations, there is noise at the riding hall in Ehren, on the Hase dyke and in the so-called Ostfriesenkurve on Langenstraße, and the finish area on the market square has a samba band, cheerleaders and then the Marathon Night party. More than 1,400 runners started across all competitions in 2026; 2027 is the 25th edition.

Pacing Strategy

A course without a single climb removes every excuse and every recovery. There is no ramp on which the pace drops by itself and no descent on which the legs roll out. Race pace therefore has to be the pace you can hold for 42 kilometres from the first kilometre onwards, and the opening lap should feel boring. In practice: plan the second lap no slower than the first, but not a second faster either.

The decisive section is the second half of the second lap, kilometres 32 to 42 between Angelbeck and the Hase dyke. You run most of it alone on open farm tracks, the field is strung out, and with no terrain to react to even attention becomes a problem. Breaking that stretch into legs from feed station to feed station holds the rhythm better than a pure time target.

The real trap at Löningen is not the profile but the warmth. A 17:00 start in late June falls in the warmest hours of a north German summer day, a large part of the lap lies unshaded on the cycle path and across the Geest flats, and in 2026 the organiser cancelled the marathon distance outright at around 35 degrees in agreement with the medical services and pushed every other start back by 90 minutes. Plan your drinking and your pace by the temperature from kilometre one, not by the finishing time.

Training plan for Remmers-Hasetal-Marathon: 12-week build

For an age group runner the marathon takes roughly three to five and a half hours. The demand is as even as a marathon can be: aerobic throughout, with no changes of intensity, no climbing load and no eccentric downhill load. That is exactly why the muscular stress is monotonous, and why the fatigue comes not from a few hard sections but from tens of thousands of nearly identical strides.

What decides the race is the ability to hold one single pace for four to five hours. That is trained with long runs at planned marathon pace rather than with hill work: runs of 25 to 32 kilometres whose second half is run at goal pace reproduce the demand of the second lap best. Because the course is two identical laps, there is also a mental case for running those long sessions deliberately on one repeated loop.

Conditions are the second training theme and are routinely underestimated. A marathon start at 17:00 in late June asks for heat acclimatisation and for a race day plan that differs from the usual morning event: the most important part of the day is what you eat between breakfast and the gun. Two or three long sessions in the late afternoon warmth in the preceding six weeks cover both, along with a rehearsed drinking plan.

The third point is the resilience of the musculoskeletal system on unvarying tarmac. With no uphill or downhill passages there is no relief at all, and calf, Achilles tendon and arch work at the same angle for the entire distance. Regular calf and foot strengthening, plus running part of the weekly volume on hard surfaces rather than exclusively on forest ground, prepares for that specifically.