Sanremo Marathon: Course, Route Profile & Map

Course & Elevation

The gun goes at 09:00 at the Pian di Poma athletics track in Sanremo. From there the course joins the Pista Ciclabile, laid on the disused coastal railway between Ospedaletti and Arma di Taggia: a continuous, traffic-free alignment right above the water, with tunnels under the headlands and views along the Riviera dei Fiori.

The lap is a double out-and-back. Eastwards it runs beyond Sanremo to a turnaround at the site of the old Arma di Taggia level crossing, just past the Bussana tunnel; westwards to the western portal of the Galleria Capo Nero, which sits exactly on the boundary between the comuni of Sanremo and Ospedaletti. The marathon runs that lap twice, the half once.

The Galleria Capo Nero is more than a tunnel: the old railway bore under the cape runs a good two kilometres and is known to cyclists as the galleria dei campioni, because the run-in to Milan-San Remo once passed through here. The profile is correspondingly unambiguous: 37 metres of ascent against 28 of descent over the measured 42.2 kilometres, and the classifier rates 100 percent of the course flat. A railway alignment is built for trains, and you feel that in every kilometre. 2026 is the seventh edition.

Pacing Strategy

On a course with not a single climb there is only one task: run evenly. Plan flat splits or a marginally negative one, and expect your kilometre times to stay near-identical across the whole distance. That is rare, and it is the reason people come here.

The trap is the absence of resistance. There is no climb to force a correction, no corner to slow you and no descent to let you recover, so a fast start only shows after two and a half hours. Hold the first ten kilometres deliberately at the easy end of your target range.

The second lap decides it, for two reasons. First, you know it in detail by then, turnarounds included, so use it for an honest check at kilometre 21. Second, on a straight alignment beside the sea you run every wind direction four times, and your effort swings while the profile does not. Judge the wind by effort, sit in a group into the wind, and note that GPS and heart rate both go unreliable inside the tunnels.

Training plan for Sanremo Marathon: 12-week build

For age-group runners the Sanremo Marathon means roughly three and a half to five and a half hours on the road. The demand is the most uniform a marathon can offer: 37 metres of ascent over 42 kilometres, 100 percent flat terrain and not one change of rhythm. That moves the entire requirement onto pace tolerance and running economy.

Build your long runs to 30-35 km and place 12-15 km at marathon race pace at the end. Add threshold runs of 12 to 18 kilometres; on a course that gives you no terrain excuse, your threshold performance decides the finishing time almost on its own.

The course-specific point is monotony. A dead-straight railway alignment with two turnarounds offers no external stimulus for hours, and anyone who trains only on varied loops loses their rhythm out there. Put some of your long runs deliberately on straight, open ground such as dykes, rail trails or waterfronts, and practise holding pace with nothing to navigate by. The second point is the unchanging stride: 42 flat kilometres with no relief load the calves and arches more one-sidedly than an undulating course, so strength work and a few deliberate changes of pace in training are worth having.

On conditions: early December on the Ligurian coast is mild, but the 09:00 start is in cool air and on the open alignment above the water the wind is the deciding factor. Plan throwaway layers, train some sessions in wind, and be ready for the tunnels, above all the two-kilometre Galleria Capo Nero, to be darker, warmer and louder than the open path.