From Pyongyang to Antarctica: how marathon-running holidays have taken off
Growing numbers of runners are organising their holidays to include a race, and the list of exotic destinations grows ever longer – a sign of the changing status of running, as it becomes more of a lifestyle than simply a sport
It was about 10 kilometres into the Pyongyang Marathon when the realisation hit me: running on the wide, empty Sungri Street past Kim Il-sung Square in the heart of the North Korean capital, I was the freest I had been on our three-day tour of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.
There were no guides anywhere in sight to tell me what to do and where to go, or to constantly monitor my actions. Instead, the streets were fully closed to traffic and lined by friendly locals cheering on race participants. I could finally take in the city sights at my own pace, like a tourist would in most places.
Without a doubt the marathon experience was the icing on the cake of our DPRK holiday – and arguably for the some 1,100 other tourists who took part in the race too.
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“I love running in different places and I was always very curious about North Korea, so this was the perfect excuse for me to combine my two passions,” says Lorena Compean, a Mexican living in Hong Kong who ran the half-marathon. “The absolute highlight was the race with so many people around giving high-fives and waving hands. It was a very different ambience than any other race, and I felt like an Olympic athlete starting and finishing in a full stadium of 50,000 people.”
There is something about running a marathon as part of a holiday that makes travel much more memorable and magical. Last November, we tied the Queenstown International Marathon into a two-week family holiday on New Zealand’s South Island, and the year before we ran the Angkor Wat Half-Marathon in the middle of a few days in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
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Marathon holidays have received rising interest in recent years, say travel agents specialising in these packages. At Flight Centre in Hong Kong, for example, marathon holiday bookings have increased by more than 250 per cent since 2015, says Callum Brown, general manager of Flight Centre Greater China.
Flight Centre began offering marathon holiday packages in 2014, and its menu now spans a diverse range of destinations, including Guam, Jordan, Cape Town, Paris and New York.
