Napoli City Half Marathon
by Sarah Wellcoat
Kev & I had been talking for a while about doing a race abroad, originally thinking about Prague or Berlin Half Marathon, but both races were already sold out. After doing a bit of research we found that Napoli City Half Marathon was on the weekend of Kev’s birthday, and it was a no brainer… we signed up! Unfortunately, in the weeks leading up the race, Kev felt something wasn’t right and the day before our flight, a scan revealed he had an uninvited plus one, in the form of an umbilical hernia!
We arrived in Naples on the Friday after an early flight at 5.45am and decided to visit the expo that day to pick up our race numbers, t shirt and goody bag. The expo was held at the same place that the race would start and finish at on Sunday, so it was a great opportunity to do a trial run of the journey to the start line. And we were glad we did! The race information advised you could use Line 6 of the metro to reach the start line, however, we soon learnt that Line 6 was closed. After rethinking our journey, we tried an alternative route meeting a Japanese couple and a South African woman who were also travelling to the expo. Between us we made it, and notes were made for making the same journey again on Sunday morning.
Sunday morning, we were up early at 6.30am to get prepared for the race, this involved an unusual race prep of bandaging Kev up to try and support his hernia. We had no idea if this would help and how he would manage but it was worth a try! After missing our initial planned metro, we hurried down to the station to catch the next metro but then missed that one after getting stuck behind a ticket queue. I am normally quite a stress head before a race and even more so now that we were late. We finally made it to the start line with 30 minutes to spare but unfortunately that was not enough time for such a big race with around 6,000 runners. After quickly leaving our bag at the bag drop, it was toilet time and there were not many Portaloos but lots of runners queuing up. It was a very stressful wait to get to the start of the queue and we had only a matter of minutes to run to the start line. Time for a quick photo and then we were off!
Napoli City Half Marathon is advertised as the fastest half marathon in Italy with breathtaking views and it certainly delivered. The route is very flat and takes you through parts of the city but also along the coastline next to the sea with Vesuvius in the background. The race also offers a relay option for two runners to run just over 10km each. Many parts of the route are out and back, and it was great to see the elites passing roughly 5 miles into the race and how relaxed they all looked. There were drummers and DJ’s on the route to keep you motivated with lots of crowds lining the streets. Water stops used paper cups for sustainability which meant we did stop briefly at times to take on water…I don’t think I will ever master the art of running and drinking from a cup. The hardest part of the course I would say is during mile 12 when you are running back through a tunnel which has a gradual incline, and it felt never ending. Finally, there was light at the end of the tunnel, literally, and the route flattens out and you soon reach the finish line.
We crossed the finish line together in a time of 01:44:44, a PB for me by a couple of seconds. Kev was more than happy to have managed to run the distance with his makeshift support helping relieve any discomfort he had been previously experiencing. We collected our medals, then went to pick up our bag then headed straight for the train and metro to get back to our apartment. The remainder of our day was spent eating and drinking and enjoying our last day in Napoli!