New Marathon in Kerry in 2013...

It has been announced recently that there is going to be a new Marathon in the town of Tralee in 2013. The planned date is the 16th of March and it looks as if it will incorporate a Half-Marathon as well. The event is going to be called the Tralee International Marathon and the date was selected in celebration of the 400th anniversary of the signing of the Tralee Charter in 1613.

So what's it going to be like? To runners in the Kingdom, it will obviously be on the 'must do' list as it's a local event. For those outside of Kerry, it's another event in an already busy road race calendar. The numbers in the Marathon itself are likely to be pretty small...maybe 200?...while the Half-Marathon will probably attract the bulk of the runners.

For the last few years, I have been posting race results for Kerry on the Running in Munster website and it's obvious that most of the races in Kerry are in the Killarney area. Tralee as a town has a larger population yet for it's size, it has relatively few races in comparison. This new event should get more people out running in the Tralee area and that might kick start some more activity in the north Kerry region. Overall, a positive development.