Baystate Marathon Fueling Plan & Pace Chart

Baystate Fueling Strategy

Baystate does not take anything from you with terrain. There is no Newton Hills, no bridge, no wall of a climb waiting at mile 21. There are 507 feet of gain spread across 26.2 miles in a 68-foot elevation band, an 8 a.m. October gun in the mid-40s, and a field where 22.9 percent of finishers walk away with a Boston qualifier. What Baystate takes from you is the thing you never budgeted for, which is that you will run the same ten miles twice with a number stuck in your head, and the course will hand you almost nothing to eat while you do it.

Start with the on-course product, because Baystate's is the thinnest of any marathon in its class and most runners find that out at mile 19. There are fifteen water stops, which is generous, at 1.7, 3.3, 5.8, 7.2, 8.8, 10.4, 12.4, 13.4, 15.9, 17.3, 18.9, 20.5, 22.5, 23.6 and 25.2. Every one has water and lemon-lime Gatorade. There are exactly two gels on the entire course, GU Vanilla Bean at mile 7 and mile 17, and there is no solid food at all. No bananas, no pretzels, no chews. If you take every single thing the course offers you finish the day around 180 grams of carbohydrate, which is roughly 50 grams an hour for a 3:30 runner. That is not a fueling plan, it is a rounding error against your target. Carry everything you intend to eat.

The drink deserves its own sentence, because runners assume big-race defaults. This is standard Gatorade Thirst Quencher, not the Endurance formula. Twelve ounces carries 21 grams of carbohydrate and 160 milligrams of sodium, and a race cup holds four to six ounces of it, so each cup you take is worth about 9 grams of carbohydrate and 65 milligrams of sodium. That is half the sodium per ounce of what Boston and Chicago hand out. Treat the Gatorade as hydration with a modest carbohydrate assist, count it at 8 to 10 grams a cup, and if you are a salty sweater bring your own salt. Also note that the GU on offer is Vanilla Bean, which is caffeinated at 20 milligrams. It is a small dose, but if you are already stacking caffeinated gels on a plan built around a specific total, know that the mile 7 and mile 17 tables are adding to it.

Take your first gel by mile 2, on flat ground along the canals before the road tilts up toward Middlesex Street. The first water stop at 1.7 is the only one the entire half marathon and relay field shares with you, so it is the most crowded table of the day by a wide margin. Aim for a cup at the far end, take it at a jog, and do not fight the pack for the near tables. Then hold 75 to 90 grams an hour, which means a gel every 20 to 25 minutes with fluid at nearly every stop. This course lets you run at the top of that range. A 47-degree mean temperature, a gut that is never jostled by grade changes, and a station every mile and a half are about as favorable a set of absorption conditions as a marathon ever gives you.

Miles 3 through 8 hold most of the day's climbing and one of only two long gaps between tables. You come up the old rail grade onto Middlesex Street, turn onto Brouillette into Chelmsford, drop down Princeton Street to Route 4, then climb again through the rail crossing to Vinal Square and out Middlesex Road toward the course high point near mile 6.5. None of it is steep, but your effort will lift five or six times in five miles, and the stretch from 3.3 to 5.8 is 2.5 miles with nothing on offer. Fuel at the 3.3 stop before you get out there, not after. The mile 7 GU table sits at 7.2, right before the Tyngsborough Bridge, which is a good place to take one if you have trained on GU and a bad place to experiment if you have not.

Miles 8 through 12.4 are the easiest running of the first half and the easiest place to quietly stop eating. You come off the Tyngsborough Bridge onto Pawtucket Boulevard and the road gives you a mile and a half back, rises briefly near mile 10, then descends gently for two miles along the river. Effort drops, pace comes free, and the mind goes somewhere else. Stops at 8.8, 10.4 and 12.4 are your rhythm here. Use all three. The audit point is the Rourke Bridge at 12.4 and the 13.1 mat just past it: if you are running 75 to 90 grams an hour you should have four or five gels down by then, and if you have three you are already behind with nine miles of nothing ahead of you.

Then the course does something no other flat marathon does to you, which is hand you the identical ten miles a second time. The loop is exactly 10.1 miles, so mile 13.4 is mile 3.3, mile 17.3 is mile 7.2, and mile 20.5 is mile 10.4. Every table, every rise, every turn arrives in the same order with tired legs. Use that. You already know the 13.4 to 15.9 gap is 2.5 miles because you ran it at 3.3, so eat before it. You already know where the high ground is. But there is a trap in the symmetry too, which is that the second loop feels like a repeat and the brain treats repeats as familiar rather than as new work. The mile 17 GU table is the last food anyone will hand you all day. After 17.3 you have 8.9 miles with water and Gatorade and whatever is in your own pockets.

The last nine miles are where Baystate is honest. The short gradual rise near mile 10 comes back at mile 20, which the race labels "The Wall," and it is a joke about the mile number rather than a real climb, but it is the first time in an hour your effort has to rise and it lands exactly where glycogen thins. Take a gel by 18.9 or 20.5 so it is already working. Past the Rourke Bridge at 22.5 you stay on the river road east past the Bellegarde Boathouse, and the only real climb in the last ten miles arrives at about 23.7, a quarter-mile pull over the O'Donnell Bridge at Mammoth Road. Take your final gel at the 22.5 or 23.6 table so it is absorbed before that. Anything after mile 24 is placebo. From the top you cruise downhill past the Textile Bridge, cross Beaver Brook at 25, take the last water at 25.2, and turn over the Aiken Street Bridge at 25.4 toward LeLacheur Park and the Tsongas Center.

Weather is the variable that decides how much of this you actually execute. The sixteen-year race-day mean is 47 degrees with an average low of 35, and an 8 a.m. gun means the first hour is the coldest part of your day. Cold blunts thirst, so drink on a schedule, not on feel, or you will arrive at mile 18 down a liter without noticing. Cold thickens gels: a gel that goes down in four seconds in August takes fifteen in a 38-degree headwind, and Baystate makes you handle at least six of them yourself. Pre-tear every tab before the gun and carry them against your skin rather than in a singlet pocket. The wind matters more here than the average of 6 miles per hour suggests, because more than ten of your miles run on exposed river road along Pawtucket Boulevard with the Merrimack valley funneling it, and flat plus windy burns energy without feeling harder. In the other direction, average highs reach 58 and warm Octobers happen in Massachusetts. Above about 62 degrees, shift 30 percent of your carbohydrate to fluid, chase every gel with a full cup of water, and add 300 to 500 milligrams of sodium an hour from your own supply, because the four-ounce cup of standard Gatorade on this course is giving you about 65.