Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris

You started under the Arc de Triomphe and finished in the Bois de Boulogne — 42 kilometres of Paris in between, most of it running along the Seine. The north bank heading east, the south bank heading west, the river holding the shape of the route together like a spine. That parallel-river structure is exactly why a Paris Marathon poster reads so cleanly: you can trace the whole city on it.

Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris at a glance

• Course type: Point-to-point from Avenue des Champs-Élysées to Avenue Foch via the Bois de Boulogne
• Elevation: Around 250 metres of gain — rolling, not flat; the rises through Vincennes and Saint-Germain are noticeable
• Race date: Early April, typically the first Sunday of the month
• Field size: Around 50,000 runners — one of Europe's largest mass-participation marathons
• Entry: Mix of open registration and tiered ballot depending on nationality; international places sell quickly

The course

The race starts on the Champs-Élysées, heading east with the Arc de Triomphe at your back. The opening kilometres are wide and fast — the boulevard is broad enough to absorb 50,000 runners without the bottlenecks you feel in narrower city races. By the time the course drops toward the Seine around km 8, the pack has thinned and the pace has settled. The river appears and stays with you for most of the next twenty kilometres.

The route follows the north bank east through the Marais and past Bastille, then enters the Bois de Vincennes around the halfway mark. The forest miles are where the race gets honest — rolling terrain, quieter crowds, and the realisation that you're not even halfway through the elevation. The course doubles back west along the south bank, passing behind Notre-Dame, through Saint-Germain-des-Prés, and out past the Eiffel Tower around km 36. This is where Paris stops being scenic and starts being a test. The river shape — north bank out, south bank back — is what makes this course so distinctive as an event poster: two roughly parallel lines with the bends of the Seine between them.

The final kilometres swing north into the Bois de Boulogne. The trees close in, the crowds thin, and then the finish chute opens up on Avenue Foch. After 42 kilometres of Paris, the last straight feels almost peaceful.

Paris is one of those races that people run once and then again. The course is genuinely hard — 250 metres of rolling elevation, a long east-to-west second half, 50,000 other runners — but the city makes it worth every kilometre. makemap renders your GPS data into a finisher poster that holds the exact shape of your run along the Seine, printed and ready for the wall.