The Hạ Long Bay Heritage Marathon 2022 will return on Sunday in Quảng Ninh Province. — Photo courtesy of organisers

Marathon

HÀ NỘI — After a year-long absence due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the Hạ Long Bay Heritage Marathon 2022 will return on Sunday in Quảng Ninh Province.

The event will feature 6,000 domestic and international athletes competing in four distances: 5km, 10km, half marathon (21km) and full marathon (42km).

The half marathon and full marathon events will start at 5am at the Quảng Ninh Palace of Planning, Fair and Exhibition on Trần Quốc Nghiên Street. The 10km and 5km distances will start later, at 6.30am.

"After the COVID-19 pandemic, many foreign runners aspire to join beautiful races, among which the Hạ Long Bay Heritage Marathon is a beautiful destination for the regional long-distance running community," said Nguyễn Trí, general director of DHA Việt Nam, which owns the race.

"We have strived hard to allow runners to run on the newly designed track. The VPBank Hà Nội Marathon 2022 has just been successfully organised by DHA Việt Nam with more than 10,000 registered runners, more than 1,000 runners from countries around the world. The Quảng Ninh-based event this year has also attracted a record number of registrations of nearly 1,200 foreigners."

To prepare for the event, the organisers invited an expert from the Association of International Marathons and Distance Races (AIMS) to come to Hạ Long to check, measure and standardise the running track.

Runners will follow a completely new road that goes past many beautiful landscapes. The road is designed to connect the cities of Hạ Long and Cẩm Phả and includes a unique tunnel under the mountains in Cẩm Phả City.

One side of the tunnel will be completely closed for the track to ensure absolute safety for runners. The coastal road is new, straight and wide so that the runners can see hundreds of rocky islands, large and small, of Hạ Long Bay, the world's natural wonder.

In 2018, British ultra-runner Lee Grantham, who held the 2017 world record for the 100km ultramarathon, competed in the Hạ Long Bay Heritage Marathon. — Photo courtesy of organisers

"In recent years, Vietnamese runners have been increasingly cared for. As a result, many wonderful marathons have been organised, of which the Hạ Long Bay Heritage Marathon is a traditional name, but also contains new and unexpected things so that its runners always want to return, having spent one time with the race," Trí said.

This is the seventh marathon organised by the Department of Culture and Sports of Quảng Ninh in collaboration with the Hạ Long municipal People's Committee, the Việt Nam Athletics Federation and DHA Việt Nam.

The event is the first race in Hạ Long to be listed on the international marathon map. Moreover, it was voted in 2018 by the famous magazine Runner's World UK as one of the 50 greatest races on earth, standing among "breathtaking and downright awesome races outside the UK".

For years, the event has become one of the dream destinations of runners around the world. In 2019, the cultural and sports event attracted the largest number of foreign tourists to Quảng Ninh, with the participation of more than 3,000 runners, including nearly 1,600 from foreign 56 countries such as the US, the UK, France, Germany, Australia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore.

Joining the event, runners have opportunities to relax and enjoy unique marine specialities in beautiful Hạ Long City. VNS