Amsterdam Marathon

The course

It begins at the Olympic Stadium, half the field starting inside it and half on Stadionweg outside, and either way the tone is set: this is a race about time. Within two kilometres you are in the Vondelpark, then out past the Rijksmuseum and south through Zuid, flat and wide and quick. At around fifteen kilometres the course meets the Amstel and stays with it for ten or so: south along the Amsteldijk past stately mansions and windmills to the bridge at Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, the furthest point of the day, then back up the opposite bank. It is the quietest stretch of the race and the most exposed — water on one side, runners coming the other way on the other, nothing to hide behind. Amsterdam gives the last eight kilometres back. The route comes home past the Rijksmuseum a second time, and the Vondelpark arrives again at forty: the same trees you passed at two, seen very differently. Then the tunnel into the stadium, and the finish in front of the grandstand, on the ground built for the 1928 Games. There is no gradient to speak of. There is only the Amstel, and what it took.

Start

Olympic Stadium, Amsterdam — the field split between a start inside the stadium and a start on Stadionweg outside

Finish

Olympic Stadium, Amsterdam (in front of the grandstand)

Shape

loop

Terrain

Flat — road and park path, with nothing beyond the small rises of the bridges over the Amstel. The long open Amstel dyke section is exposed, so wind and the monotony of a ten-kilometre out-and-back matter far more than gradient.