A downhill marathon – how hard can it be?

Just days after racing the Berlin Marathon, AW’s Running Shoe Guru tackled the “World’s Fastest Marathon” and surprised himself with a victory

Running a marathon on a predominantly downhill course might sound easy, but a race billed by the organizers.

Marathon Tours and Travel as ‘The World’s Fastest Marathon’ proved harder than it might appear.

At its first running in 2019 the race was won by Kenyan Anthony Karinga Maina in 2:09:38 with pre-race favourite and fellow countryman Julius Ndiritu Aguilar fading to 2:43:34, so although the course has the potential to be record breaking it’s by no means a given. Maina had in fact gone through 30km at sub-2hr pace on that occasion.

The race gets underway greeted by the rising sun and the road immediately drops away at an average gradient of 4.6% although at some points the road signs warn of an 8% drop in elevation. The mountain air is cool at the start at just 10C but with no noticeable wind except for the breeze created as we quickly descend, the temperature is ideal for a marathon.

The course drops around 2000m in total, with all the descent in the first 19 miles of the race. From then the route follows the Rio Genil river into Granada where runners are greeted by four laps of the Jardines Del Salon, a tree-lined elongated park with open air bars and restaurants

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