Reg Regalado Regalado Reg | © Courtesy of Big Sur © Courtesy of Big Sur Marathon © Ian Walton for Virgin Money London Marathon for Virgin © Ian Walton

CONTENTS Easy Harder Epic

INTRODUCTION 06 The Dipsea Trail Race (USA) 82 The Angkor Wat Half Marathon (Cambodia) 168 The Athens Marathon (Greece) 256 Copacabana at Dawn (Brazil) 88 The Marathon of Afghanistan 174 Arrancabirra () 262 AFRICA 08 The Chicago Shoreline (USA) 94 A Climb into the Foothills of Nepal 180 The North Pole Marathon 268 The Safaricom Half Marathon (Kenya) 10 Badwater 135 (USA) 100 Seoul’s Han River (South Korea) 186 The Marathon des Sables () 18 Bay to Breakers (USA) 106 OCEANIA 274 The Great Ethiopian Run 24 A Winter Warm-Up in Québec City (Canada) 112 EUROPE 192 The Great Ocean Road Marathon (Australia) 276 The Comrades Marathon (South Africa) 30 The Big Sur Marathon (USA) 118 A Tightrope Run Along the Amalfi Coast (Italy) 194 Melbourne’s Must-Do Park Run (Australia) 282 An Illuminating Ascent in La Paz (Bolivia) 124 A Sightseeing Lap Around Edinburgh (Scotland) 202 The Ormiston Gorge Pound Loop (Australia) 288 AMERICAS 36 Portland’s Epic Park Run (USA) 130 An Ode to a Czech Running Hero (Czech Republic) 208 The Kepler Track (New Zealand) 294 The Boston Marathon (USA) 38 The Grand Canyon’s Rim-to-Rim Challenge (USA) 136 A Portal to the Past in Pembrokeshire (Wales) 214 Sydney’s Spectacular Seafront (Australia) 300 Havana’s El Malecón (Cuba) 44 Barcelona’s Sea-to-Summit () 220 Ultra-Trail Australia 306 Mesa Trail (USA) 52 ASIA 142 A Classic Round in the Lake District (England) 226 The Ghost Run of Waihi Gorge (New Zealand) 312 A Tour of Vancouver’s World-Class Seawall (Canada) 58 The Jinshanling Great Wall Marathon (China) 144 Berlin’s Greatest Hits () 232 Tasmania’s Freycinet Peninsula (Australia) 318 The Barkley (USA) 64 Hong Kong’s Victoria Peak (China) 150 The London Marathon (England) 238 A Rainforest Run in Costa Rica 70 An Adventure Run in India 156 A Quiet Run in Rome (Italy) 244 INDEX 324 © Stefano Jeantet A Patriotic Path Around the National Mall (USA) 76 Kyoto’s Kamo Riverfront (Japan) 162 © 2013 Hugo Hagman / Getty Images Dublin’s Wild and Windswept Peninsula (Ireland) 250

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Clockwise from left: pounding New Opening spread, clockwise Zealand’s Kepler Track; running from left: experience ancient the Great Ocean Road in Australia; Angkor Wat and the sunshine of Positano, a picturesque pit-stop California’s Big Sur on foot; Alpine on Italy’s Amalfi Coast. Previous fancy dress on Italy’s Arrancabirra; page: negotiating tricky terrain on the classic London Marathon Australia’s Larapinta Trail INTRODUCTION

oday running is more than just exercise. Marathons are no running – some even do it for a living – but also about the idea longer just for fitness junkies, and the sport has spawned a that to have run somewhere is to know it. These are stories that will surprisingly rabid and diverse subculture. Sure, people still convince you there are times when a run is the way to see a place. T run to get into shape, but these days just as many do it to You’ll learn why the 120-year-old Boston Marathon has become meditate. Some do it for the high or just to clear their head, while a symbol of pride for America’s oldest major city, and how a simple others enter races as a way to make a dozen friends all at once. run from Bondi to Coogee beaches allows you to become one Many stick to pavements, though more are running off-road and into of Sydney’s fitness-mad beach bums (if only for an hour). You’ll Graham Dainty Graham the wilderness. Regardless of how or where they do it, most runners understand why a stage race like the ’s brutal 156-mile | agree that it is the great grounding constant in their life. (250km) Marathon des Sables sears its way into your psyche, and Most runners will also agree that moving through a landscape how a quick run around Québec in winter reveals the city’s beauty. © Kepler Challenge © Kepler while also breaking a sweat has an oddly profound effect on one’s Marathon Road Ocean © Courtesy of the Great sense of place. Whether you’re repeating a well-worn loop close HOW TO USE THIS BOOK to home or exploring an exotic new land while travelling, running Each of the five chapters in this book includes a special collection affords a deeper understanding of a town or city and its citizens. of runs from that particular region, from easy-access park runs and Unlike a walking tour, it has a way of forcing more self-reflection, city loops to iconic marathons and epic ultras. A colour-coded key while also allowing you to cover more ground in a short amount of on the contents page will help you identify which are easy, which time. In fact, one of the best, and quickest, ways to get to know an require serious fitness and fortitude, and which fall somewhere in unfamiliar place is by competing in a local race, and it is perhaps between (based almost entirely on distance and elevation gain). the only way one can work out and go sightseeing all at once. Accompanying each main story is some practical information to Indeed, running now has a surprisingly symbiotic relationship with help you follow in the author’s footsteps. The authors have also travel itself – experienced vagabonds insist it cures jetlag, while included three extra routes or races that have a similar character to running seems to be the one exercise we actually do when travelling, their featured run, but may be closer to home or more accessible. whether for a short business trip or during a round-the-world It’s important to point out that there are a handful of insanely adventure. There is nothing easier than stuffing a pair of running difficult runs in this book that only a few of us will ever be able shoes into our luggage, and those running shoes can now take to do. In many cases, the people who have written about them us to places such as Everest Base Camp, the Australian Outback are professional runners, paid to train on a daily basis. But the and even to the North Pole. As more and more people seek out armchair adventure value of these tales cannot be overstated. You running travel adventures, organised races are popping up in the will no doubt become parched just reading about Death Valley’s most extreme corners of the globe. And not only marathons – ultra- Badwater 135 and become dizzy reading about the notoriously distance events are booming. disorienting Barkley Marathons. These are stories that will inspire And this is perhaps the most remarkable thing to happen in the you to kick things up a notch, to train for something bold and, 500px world of running in the past decade: those of us who used to run perhaps, someday sign up for a race you never thought possible. |

a few miles after work now run 10Ks; those who used to run 10Ks now Whichever runs you decide to add to your bucket list, take the ronnybas | run marathons; and those who have run a couple of marathons now time to source and study your own detailed maps and to gear up have their eyes on . properly for any routes that might take you off the beaten path. Be In this book are 200 of the greatest runs on the planet, in some 60 kind to your fellow runners and even kinder to the wild landscapes countries across all seven continents. The 50 featured runs are first- you travel through. Be prepared for a few weird looks from locals

hand accounts, written by people who are not only passionate about and, most importantly, never forget to pack your running shoes. Iacomino Riccardo © Francesco

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henever I think of Morocco I think of sensory overload. I remember street vendors selling

monkeys, snakes and exotic knives. I see bags of START spices in every colour imaginable and scents that M'SSICI Ware like nothing I’m familiar with back home in Virginia. But I’ve FINISH never fully understood why this is what I remember about Morocco MERZOUGA – of the 40 days I’ve spent in the region, 99% of that time has been spent in what could only be described as Saharan sensory deprivation. For me, Morocco is where I go to compete in the gruelling stage race known as the Marathon des Sables, a seven-day, 150-mile THE MARATHON (240km) run across the North African desert, where average temps top out around 104°F (40°C). In the past decade, I’ve run DES SABLES the MdS twice, in 2009 and 2010, when I even finished third. After years as a sponsored ultrarunner – having also now run both the This iconic 150-mile (240km) multiday run across Morocco’s unforgiving Badwater 135 and the Barkley Marathons – the MdS remains one Jean-Philippe Ksiazek | Getty Images

Sahara makes for a great introduction to the world of stage racing. of the hardest races I have ever attempted. But that’s probably ©

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MESA TRAIL Easy-access wilderness on the outskirts of Boulder, Colorado holds a trail run so good it will turn burned out pavement junkies into off-road addicts.

probably would have quit running forever if it weren’t for a run I did 20 years ago. Since then, I have probably run this trail more

than a thousand times, as it sits just a stone's throw away from my BOULDER adopted hometown of Boulder, Colorado. Indeed it has become I START much more than my favourite place to log miles over the years – it’s CHAUTAUQUA my go-to destination for athletic fitness, deep thinking and self-calm, PARK not to mention a special place to run with my dog or with friends, manage career stress, and even mourn the passing of my father. Like a lot of runners, I was at a point of being burned out, broken down and just plain bored of pavement, training for the same 10K runs and enduring the same kind of suffering through a big city marathon every year. Oddly, the same meditative – almost therapeutic – monotony that draws us to running often becomes the thing we despise most. Then, by way of some unsolicited advice from a neighbour, I stumbled upon this utopian singletrack trail that helped change my life. Mesa Trail is a rolling, 6.7-mile (10.8km) dirt trail skirting beneath the iconic mountains that make up Boulder’s western horizon line – most notably, Green Mountain, Bear Peak and the Flatirons. Long one of the trail-running capitals of the US, Boulder has more than 40 unique routes and 300 miles (480km) of singletrack, dirt roads and craggy mountain ridgelines. And for many reasons, the utilitarian Mesa Trail is the best of the bunch. I didn’t know it at the time, but that first run on Mesa Trail stirred something in me. It’s an idyllic route, one that spoils you with both FINISH mild and challenging sections, but nothing too steep that it cannot SOUTH MESA be run at a slow pace. Most importantly, it has a flow about it, a TRAILHEAD moderately undulating profile that continually rolls up and down

without sending a runner’s heart rate off the charts. © amygdala_imagery | Getty Images

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A TOUR OF VANCOUVER’S WORLD-CLASS SEAWALL Hugging 400 hectares of rainforest and parkland, the stunning Stanley Park Seawall wows visitors and inspires even the most jaded local runners.

or local runners, Vancouver’s Stanley Park Seawall is their treadmill – part of a routine that belies its beauty, an after-work or weekend ritual that is somehow both F routine and rare at the same time. However, there’s a reason it’s often mobbed with tourists and all a local needs to do to be reminded how spectacular it is, is to look at the face of STANLEY PARK one of the hundreds of people who visit each day, as they stroll, VANCOUVER cycle, sit and sightsee. HARBOUR I certainly never need reminding of how spectacular this stretch FINISH of coastline is. These days, I guess you could say I’m both a local and a tourist. I lived in Vancouver for years, but now live 7500 VANCOUVER miles (12,000km) away in London. I only get to run the seawall START when I’m visiting. But to be clear, running the Seawall is the first thing I do whenever I do return to my hometown – and each time it feels like an embrace from an old friend, rekindling memories I thought I’d lost forever. I have wondered if it would mean this much to me if I did still live here and ran it every day. The answer is yes – it’s that good. During one recent visit, I couldn’t wait to lace up my running shoes even affords sublime views of downtown. It also affords great views and make my way downtown. I was starting at Waterfront Station of the North Shore Mountains and islands floating in the Strait of near Coal Harbour. Stanley Park is an island of trees linked to the Georgia, leading out to the frigid North Pacific. West End of downtown by a narrow isthmus. But its famous 5.5-mile It was early and I felt like I had the city to myself. I jogged (9km)-long strand, with its paved lanes separating pedestrians from westward along West Cordova St before cutting north along a cyclists, has been extended a little over a mile further east, along pedestrian mall and down some steps to West Waterfront Rd Coal Harbour, which makes it possible to do a longer run from and the Winter Olympics’ cauldron. A few more steps downward downtown than was previously possible. Some say the Stanley Park landed me squarely on the Seawall’s pavement. Floatplanes Seawall is the longest uninterrupted waterfront footpath in the world. bobbed peacefully on the docks – later in the day they would all It is certainly the ultimate way to experience Vancouver, as it winds have engines blaring, and be ferrying people to and from remote

past stands of towering evergreens, skirts along sandy beaches and islands in the sound. | Getty Images © dan_prat

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ortland, Oregon has two tourist destinations that truly and reliably live up to the hype. One is Powell’s City NORTHWEST INDUSTRIAL of Books, the independent bookstore that occupies P a full city block on West Burnside. The other is Forest Park. (Sorry, Voodoo Doughnut.) Interestingly, they have a lot in common. Both are huge, exerting a gravitational pull that attracts visitors from near and far, and both are supremely satisfying places to lose yourself for an hour or two. Both are cathedrals – Powell’s, FOREST PARK to books; Forest Park, to nature. NORTHWEST But Forest Park is truly special in what it has to offer an DISTRICT PORTLAND’S especially picky outdoorsy and fit population. The bar is set quite START/FINISH high for greenspace in a city that is a short drive from both the EPIC PARK RUN ocean and the mountains. Sitting just across the Willamette River WILLAMETTE from downtown, it occupies a huge expanse just above the entire HEIGHTS Forest Park is one of America’s greatest urban wildernesses, a vast untamed western shore. During my four years here, I’ve seen everyone on

oasis in Oregon where the trail running is so good you’ll forget you’re in a city. Forest Park’s trails, from elite runners (Portland is home to quite | Getty Images Raman © Sankar

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