Marathons to Run for Fun

When it comes to choosing a marathon, you should select based on a number of options: your date range for training (when can you train?), location (where can you go? where do you want to go?), and, of course, marathon fun level.  I usually forget all about convenience of dates & location in lieu of the fun level and weirdness of marathon.  Here are a few marathons you might choose for their fun potential:

Marathon du Medoc

We saw oysters up ahead

The self titled "longest marathon in the world" considers itself thusly because you are running forever through France's Loire Valley while you drink glass after glass of wine.  Runners are costumed, and the starting line hosts acrobats & fireworks, and villagers hand you pate as you pass by their storefronts.  I ran this race in a little under 6 hours, alongside a team dressed as a steamroller.  We might have been faster if we didn't stop for a dance party in the steak tent at mile 23.  I think we tasted 13 of the roughly 17 wines available on the route.


The Berlin Marathon

Dirndl required

This run is fun because it's the flattest (read: fastest) marathon in the world.  I think every race is the somethingest something in the world.  It's also humungous, with at least 40K people when I ran it in 2010.  I ran my personal best 3:50 for this run, and followed it up with a trip to Munich, where I drank at least my weight in beer to make up for calories lost in Berlin.

The Vegas Marathon


I guess this marathon has had some blunders in recent years, but when I ran the half a few years ago, we had a blast.  It's a really long, hot race, but the half was just fine for me- basically the strip and a little more of the dirty underbelly of Nevada.

But when you're done, you're in Vegas!







Safari Marathon

The Big Five marathon is a great way to use that cold hard cash you've been collecting in cube in a storage unit.

I mean, it's probably the most expensive way to run a marathon without raising money for a good cause, but I'd love to run alongside antelopes and in the footprints of elephants.  There's also a poor man's Safari Half-Marathon in San Diego, which I bet is fun too, just less African.



There's also the Solar Eclipse Marathon in Australia, the Great Wall Marathon in China, the Polar Circle Marathon in Greenland- but now I'm wandering away from fun into traveling/adventure-thons.  Look out for my next post...