Why is Valencia known as the City of Running?
Valencia — ‘The Running City’ is the strategic concept for highlighting the city as an ideal destination for road runners and sport tourism. The city has just made yet another giant stride towards consolidating its world position. Crowning its many achievements over the last few years, Valencia has just become the city with the most IAAF Label trials.
The International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) certifies the standard of the world’s best road races with its Gold, Silver, and Bronze labels, which take into account various sport and organisational aspects of trials. Achieving the award of the Bronze Label for the 10-kilometre Valencia Ibercaja Race and for the 15-kilometre Valencia Banco Mediolanum Night Race in June has brought the number of IAAF labels held by the city’s trials to five. The two latest IAAF labels come in addition to: the Bronze Label held by the 10-kilometre Valencia Trinidad Alfonso Race; the Gold Labels held by both the Valencia-Trinidad Alfonso EDP Marathon and Half-Marathon since 2016 (the last two being the first road races in Spain to be awarded this top IAAF distinction).
To sum up, the two Gold Labels and the three Bronze Labels put Valencia at the top of the world ranking for road running given that no other city holds so many international distinctions.
‘Valencia Ciudad del Running’ is a new city concept. It’s not a huge event, but a city turned into a great race. This is a strategic concept that aims to join forces in strengthening the city as an international reference in the practice of popular athletics and distance running. This initiative has the special support of Trinidad Alfonso Foundation and the organization of the Valencia City Hall and will unite the most international races of the city: Valencia Half Marathon Trinidad Alfonso and Marathon Trinidad Alfonso, the fastest of Spain at 42K and 21k, and Valencia 10K Trinidad Alfonso.
So what makes for a highly “runnable” city? Valencia is at sea level, which doesn’t hurt. It has a climate that’s comfortable year-round, with a breeze off the Balearic even during the hottest summer months. It’s also a manageable size, with under 800,000 inhabitants, and offers a wide variety of terrain (beaches, hills, residential streets, parks), all within 134.6 square kilometres. During your non-running hours, you can explore the exotic mix of historic and modern buildings (Santiago Calatrava’s ultra-modern City of Arts and Sciences is shown above).
Kenyan Kyptum sets half-marathon world record in Valencia
One year after his compatriot Joyciline Jepkosgei broke the women’s world record at the Medio Maratón de Valencia Trinidad Alfonso, Kenya’s Abraham Kiptum broke the men’s world record* at the IAAF Gold Label road race on Sunday (28), clocking 58:18 to take five seconds off the mark set by Eritrea’s Zersenay Tadese in 2010.
At the technical meeting it was confirmed that the men’s pacemakers would reach the 10km point in 27:50 to target a finishing time just inside 59 minutes, but there wasn’t any talk of a possible world record assault.
On a perfect day for endurance events (a slight wind and 11C), the race opened according to the plan with the main pack passing the opening five kilometres in 13:56. By 10 kilometres, the pace had dropped slightly as the 15-man lead pack went through that checkpoint in 28:02.
Boosted by the crowd and fully aware that he was close to world record schedule, Kiptum kept on pushing hard to open a sizeable margin over the Ethiopian pair. The Kenyan reached 20 kilometres in 55:18 to take three seconds off Tadese’s previous world best of 55:21 set on his way to his world half marathon best of 58:23 in Lisbon eight years ago.
Having covered the second 10-kilometre section in 27:16, Kiptum strode home in 58:18 to bring the world record back to his country’s possession, Samuel Wanjiru being his predecessor in 2007 (58:35). Valencia, meanwhile, is now the venue of both men’s and women’s world records.
