A hilly course in two acts
Sydney's course starts at Bradfield Park in Milsons Point and immediately climbs the Sydney Harbour Bridge, roughly a 50 meter rise over a kilometer and a half, in the first three kilometers of the race. From there it moves through the Sydney CBD, Circular Quay, and Pyrmont, out and back along Anzac Parade, and a loop through Centennial Park, before the course's decisive test: a climb up Oxford Street between roughly kilometers 35 and 40. The route finishes with a descent down Macquarie Street to the Sydney Opera House Forecourt, one of the most recognizable finish lines in the sport.
With about 313 meters of total climbing against 396 meters of descent, Sydney is genuinely hilly, closer in character to Boston or New York than to the flat, record-chasing majors. What makes it distinctive is the placement of its two hardest climbs: one in the first three kilometers, while runners are fresh, and one between 35 and 40 kilometers, when they are not.
Becoming the seventh major
Sydney's promotion to major status was announced on 3 November 2024, confirming the 2025 edition as the first to officially count. The bar for admission included field size, elite quality, and broadcast reach, criteria the race had to meet across two review cycles before it qualified. A signal of how seriously the elite field took the new status: Eliud Kipchoge, the most decorated marathoner of his generation, raced the 2025 Sydney Marathon and finished 9th, the kind of entry a genuinely minor race does not attract.
In that same 2025 edition, the first counted as a Major, Hailemaryam Kiros ran 2:06:06 and Sifan Hassan ran 2:18:22, both course records and both also described as the fastest marathon times ever run on Australian soil. Hassan's time came more than three minutes faster than the previous best.
How to train for Sydney
Sydney's two climbs sit at opposite ends of a runner's fatigue curve, and that is the single most important thing to train for.
Train hills on tired legs, not only fresh ones
Standard hill-repeat sessions, done early in a run, prepare you for the Harbour Bridge but not for Oxford Street. Add hill efforts late in a long run, after 30 or more kilometers of cumulative fatigue in your build, so your legs have practiced producing force on a climb when glycogen is already low.
Build rolling-terrain long runs
A genuinely undulating course rewards runners who train on varied terrain rather than pure flat-tempo work. If your usual long run route is flat, deliberately add a hillier option into your weekly rotation as race day approaches.
Plan your training calendar around a Southern Hemisphere date
For runners based in the Northern Hemisphere, Sydney's late-August or early-September date means building your marathon fitness through your own summer for a race that lands in Sydney's early spring. That is a scheduling detail worth mapping out early, not discovering a few weeks out.
Sydney's hill work matters, but it is course-specific layering on top of a real foundation. Build your aerobic base and anchor your week around the long run before adding the climb-specific sessions above.
