Which marathon in August 2011?

Starting to build up training distances now, without too much extra hurry, we would be ready to do a marathon the coming August. That's the easy part... the problem is, where?

It will be the peak of summer, and in most places it's too hot to run a marathon, unless of course you cross over to the southern hemisphere. In fact, while searching the web I found two marathons that will be held in Australia in August 2011 - Alice Springs and Adelaide.

This side of the world, to escape the heat of summer we need to move north: Helsinki, Reykjavik, Siberia in Russia, Greenland! Let's have a look at some of these.

If you had an idea of taking your pet to run the Reykjavik Marathon, forget about it. No pets are allowed to take part. Neither can you run the marathon pushing your baby in a pram: only helpers of disabled participants are allowed this type of equipment. But otherwise, if like me you wish to visit this fascinating country and do a marathon while you're there - Saturday 20th August is the date. They boast temperatures of around 12 to 14 Celsius this time of the year, "ideal for running a marathon". There's bound to be some rainfall, of course, since the way it works in Iceland is: "if you don't like the weather, go inside and come back 15 minutes later". It's bound to have changed by then, and they say it's true too!

The course is a single loop, with a small stretch at the end that almost repeats the part at the beginning. The course is not completely traffic free. It's flat for 60% of the way, and rolling the remaining 40%. The change in level is 30 metres overall. Looks quite OK - I could even try it out one day. To relax my sore muscles after the race, the following day I'd look for one of various public baths with naturally heated water that they have peppered around the country. It does, indeed, look like an interesting prospect.

If 12 to 14 Celsius is too warm for your liking, you might prefer to opt for our Icelandic friends' neighbouring land, Greenland. In the capital Nuuk (population 15,500), in early August, you should expect a temperature of around 7 to 11 Celsius, although a look at the pictures of the starting line of the Nuuk marathon shows participants wearing short sleeves, or even vests, normal shorts and no gloves at all. So at least on that occasion it wasn't really freezing cold. As interpreted from their website in Danish by Translate with Live Search, they say it's a demanding, hilly affair. "The hills is one of the toughest for marathons in the world", but the map of the course includes contour lines, and the route doesn't seem to cross so many of them. Apart from which, one tends to get used to superlatives used by most everyone, whatever the occasion.

This certainly qualifies, to my standards, as an exotic marathon in unusual surroundings. It's not too crowded at all - a couple of dozen participants - so you could very well achieve a good placing. In the 2010 edition, at my standard 3h30m I would have placed fourth. The winner came in at 2h40, and captured a prize of 7000 kroner (compared to 450 kr. for participation). The runner-up receives 5000 kr., and the third placed finisher gets 2000 kr., which means I would have missed receiving a prize by a whisker...

If, for you, this seems like a good idea - enjoy your trip to Greenland!

But, maybe, this is too extreme, or too cold, for your liking. In that case, voilà, how about a marathon in much warmer conditions? How about... why, the Siberian International Marathon of course. In early August the expected temperature range there is 18 to 22 Celsius. I've read a review of this marathon where the participant actually complained of the heat!

Or, if you like your marathons to be challenging, with lots of hills, you will enjoy the Monschau Marathon, in Gernmany, close to the Belgian border - on Sunday 14 August - with a difference of 250 metres in altitude between the lowest and the highest point along the route. In one particular stretch, from the 12th to the 14th kilometre, there's a hill that rises by about 150 metres. If you don't mind going up and down hills, even for a marathon distance, and you would like to do this in a forested area surrounding a beautiful German town hidden down a valley, the Monschau Marathon is definitely worth looking into.

We're now much closer to home, and in fact, for a Belgium-based runner, a more logical place to run a marathon in August 2011 would be the Guernsey marathon in late August.

Guernsey is the second largest of the Channel Islands, lying 70 miles from England and 30 miles off France. The marathon runs along a picturesque route, only slightly undulating in the beginning, but generally flat, entering "9 out of the 10 parishes" in Guernsey, consisting basically of a round tour of the island. Guernsey boasts a long history of marathons. The one in 2009 was 100 years after the first marathon there, but also 17 years since the previous one. In 2010, there were 141 finishers, but today, in December 2010 there's still no mention on their website of the next edition, which I should hope will be in 2011 since I could even consider taking part.