Marathon comparisons

I've now run three marathons - the Royal Victoria Marathon in 2007, the North Olympic Discovery Marathon in 2011, and most recently the Boston Marathon in 2012. I kept very detailed logs about my training for each one, so here is the comparison. In each case I did 5 months of focused training. So a lot of the numbers displayed below are the totals for the 5 months leading up to the race.

Stat	RVM 2007	NODM 2011	Boston 2012
Total distance	1288 km (* no GPS)	1243 km	1424 km
Total time	111 hours	115 hours	134 hours
Races	7 (4 km, 6 km, 8 km, 10 km, half)	4 (800m, 5 km, 10 km, half)	10 races (5 km, 8km, 10km, 15 km, half)
Runs > 20 km	8	11	14
Runs > 30 km	4	6	8
Longest run	~34 km	36 km	37 km
Highest weekly km	92 km	120 km	122 km
Tempos (<4:30)	1	18	21
Yasoo 800s (10x800m)	2:58, 2:58, 2:57, 2:57, 2:55, 2:52, 2:55, 2:53, 2:47, 2:55 (Avg 2:55)	2:51, 2:47, 2:45, 2:41, 2:42, 2:39, 2:40, 2:41, 2:44, 2:22 (Avg 2:41)	2:49, 2:51, 2:47, 2:46, 2:45, 2:40, 2:41, 2:44, 2:41, 2:30 (Avg 2:43)
Goal	Sub 3 hours	Sub 3 hours	2:55
Race day weather	Mild, ~12 °C, rainy in 2nd half	Sunny and hot - ~20 °C (sunburn on back)	~29 °C, brutally hot
Marathon result	3:02:56 (1:29/1:34)	2:59:45 (1:29/1:31)	3:13:30 (1:31/1:42)

* I have a feeling that my 2007 distances were slightly inflated since I didn't have a GPS watch, and so I could only guess how far I ran based on how hard I was running and how long it took.

My Garmin Connect activities are public and can be viewed here: NODM, Boston.

I didn't have a GPS watch for the 2007 marathon, but I found a lot of other people who have run the Victoria course, and I combined the elevation profiles for the three marathons here. You can see that the NODM course has a lot more elevation drop, but it also has some very steep uphills too. The RVM course is flatter in general, but has lots of undulation. And Boston is mostly downhill except for the Newton hills from 25 km - 33 km.