Chiang Mai Marathon 2013 Review

Last week’s Chiang Mai Marathon 2013 was for many Thai runners the final race of 2013’s running calendar. It was the 8th edition of this marathon event and there were more participants registered than ever before.

I planned to do the half marathon myself as a kick off for some serious running training again after 5 weeks of recovery and building up. I had a rough week behind me (fever/cold), so I decided to run it together with my father-in-law who was aiming for a 1.45 half instead. The chilly Chiang Mai morning was perfect for running, somewhere around 10-15º. I was freezing all through the race though, recalling Swedish football preseason memories.

The race started from the Thapae Gate and the first 8 km of the route was around Chiang Mai’s city wall. Then we ran out of town towards the half marathon U-turn which was 13-14 km into the race. We met the overall winner Bryan Marotta, who was flying (or “cruising”, as he probably would have called it himself) down the slightly down-sloping route back towards the city.

Unfortunately the distance was far from accurate in this race. The full marathon was 43km(?) and the half was 2 km too long. This is something the organizer really should look into. The cold temperature and the relatively flat course make Chiang Mai Marathon a great race for Thailand runners to set new personal bests. There were many unofficial PB’s in this race with runners stopping their Garmins at 42.2 or 21.1 km. The official results however, show much slower times. So please organizers, get the distance right to next year, and this would be the perfect final race of the year.

Lastly, how did it go for the PB-chasing father-in-law? He had a great race, smashing his old 1.54 PB and got the 1.45 he was aiming for. My record as a pacemaker: 1 race, 1 PB, 100% PB-rate.