A good pacing plan for the Flying Pig Marathon looks nothing like a good pacing plan for a flat, fast major. Even-split pacing by the numbers on your watch works well on a course with no meaningful terrain; it works against you here, where a long, sustained climb sits right in the middle of the race and a long descent follows it. The Flying Pig consistently ranks among the tougher Boston-qualifying courses in the country, and the course's own qualifying-rate data on this page reflects exactly that. Here's how to actually run it.

Pace by effort, not by the number on your watch

The single biggest adjustment hilly-course pacing requires is shifting from pace-based to effort-based thinking. On the climb through Gilbert Avenue and into Eden Park, holding your flat-ground goal pace means running at a meaningfully higher effort than you would on level ground — and that effort cost compounds over a multi-mile climb. Runners who insist on hitting a fixed pace through that stretch routinely pay for it in the second half. The better approach: let your pace slow on the uphill in proportion to the grade, and think in terms of consistent perceived effort instead of consistent splits.

Don't spend early miles you'll need later

The opening miles across the Ohio River into Newport and Covington are the flattest on the course, and a fresh field plus loud crowds make them feel fast and easy. That's precisely the danger. Every minute of overcooked pace in the first few miles has to be repaid somewhere, and on this course, "somewhere" is usually the climb that starts a few miles later — the worst possible place to discover you went out too hard.

Respect the climb, then use the descent

Once you're through the Gilbert Avenue climb and the rolling hilltop miles that follow, the course turns into a long, genuinely fast descent back toward the river. This is where measured effort on the way up pays real dividends: runners who conserved through the climb often find they have the legs to run the descent hard, while runners who fought the hill too aggressively find the descent painful instead of fast. Downhill running late in a marathon is still demanding — it just demands different things, mainly quad control rather than raw aerobic capacity — so practice running relaxed and controlled downhill in training rather than simply letting gravity take over.

Plan for a slower, more variable finish than a flat course would produce

Because so much of this course's difficulty sits in the middle rather than at the very end, many runners find their overall pacing looks less like a smooth curve and more like three distinct phases: controlled effort early, patient effort through the climb, and a faster, downhill-assisted push through the final miles. If you're chasing a specific finish time, build in some cushion relative to what you'd run on a flat course — comparing your Flying Pig goal directly to a flat-course PR time will set an unrealistic bar.

Practical pacing takeaways

• Set an effort-based plan for the climb miles, not a fixed pace target, and accept a slower split there than on flat terrain.
• Bank patience, not time, in the opening miles across the river — the crowd energy there is not a signal to speed up.
• Train specifically for the descent. Downhill repeats in the weeks before race day will do more for your late-race split than additional flat tempo work.
• Set a time goal with a hill-course buffer built in, rather than transplanting a flat-course PR pace directly onto this route.

The runners who have the best days on this course tend to be the ones who stopped fighting the terrain and started working with it — patient through the climb, controlled on the descent, and honest with themselves about what a good time looks like on a course this shaped.