Benidorm Marathon and Half Marathon

Benidorm is normally a place I would totally avoid, but an invite to run with the Pocklington Running Club (nr York) lead me there for the last weekend of November.  Although out of season, the weather was still warm and the hotels full of the “senior” clientele. 

The race itself is on the Sunday with the marathoners (few hundred) off at 8:30 and the halfers (about 3000) off at 10:00.  No missing the starting gun in Spain as they launch a volley of firework bangers exploding over your heads as you depart from the town hall.  Having left what was like a war zone, we headed of through the town streets and into the ‘old town’.  From there, we headed south and popped out on the sea front where we then ran the entire esplanade of Benidorm.  This leads you into the Northern, more English part of town where the signage clearly indicated I could stop for traditional fish and chips, full English breakfast or a Sunday roast or just drop off at the Geordie bar.  We headed in-land past the multitude of high rise apartments and towards the scenic backdrop of the surrounding mountains.  This was about 1.5 miles of incline at about the 9 mile mark and was proving tough for many runners.  Thankfully, a turn around point at a beep-matt and the last couple of miles were down-hill with a light tail wind to bring you back to the town hall for a carpeted finish (red for marathoners, blue for the halfers).

My mission for this event was to set a pace for my mate Wendy to get in less than 2 hours.  This was going to be tricky as my watch chose that morning to run out of batteries.  My legs obviously know their pace settings however as we got in with 25 seconds to spare ...... result!

Full Results

http://www.championchiplevante.com/nuevo/

Article by Mark Philo
Page created: 2nd December 2007.