The 30th anniversary edition of the Lanzarote marathon has been cancelled a few weeks before runners and organizers take to the start line.
While runners count the cost of flights accommodation and the missed opportunity to run a Marathon with only a month to go.
For many this will echo memories of all the canceled events over the last while due to various outside pressures placed on event organizers.
I can only imagine this is a huge upset for all parties involved and would not be a decision that was taken lightly by the organizers after all this was not just any year this was to be the 30th anniversary of the Lanzarote marathon.
For anyone that has participated in this event in the past you will know the organizing committee and army of volunteers put 110% into this event hosting various distances 10km 1/2 marathon marathon with even races for the kids as they get to run down the iconic finishing straight. It is the energy & passion of the organizers that makes this a great event (and the winter sunshine of course) because of this, it has for many become an annual pilgrimage.
I can only imagine the work that they put in to keep the event on track up to the final hour as it were.
I know this year they scaled it back to just a marathon event to comply with various conditions. They had to meet and overcome condition after condition for an event to happen and finally given the current climate it became no longer possible to ensure they could host a safe fun enjoyable event. I am sure the cancellation was done after every possibility to hold a safe event was exhausted.
Again I know this is not a decision anybody wants to make and the team are no doubt feeling deflated and upset. I have ran this event a few times and the volunteers endlessly cheered us all on applauded each and everyone and shared the highs they lived for race day to see our dreams come true.
So today I say thank you to each and everyone of the team that tried so so hard to host this year's event and hopefully we will share some more amazing memories soon.
Hopefully we will see this event back in the future.
2 comments:
Hi Alex,
I think you are being a bit charitable with your comments. To cancel an international marathon 4 weeks prior to the start date of the event is poor, in my view.
If there were doubts about the event taking place, surely they should have come to light much sooner. Given the current climate, and given that this is an international event with people flying in, you can't mess people about to that extent. They should have come to a decision in September and stuck with it. The official reasons given for the cancellation by the organizers were vague and uninformative. They had officially launched the event about six weeks ago via Facebook, so you would wonder what went wrong in the interim. More than likely, it was the small number of registrations for the marathon. They had capped the entry to 1000 and had only 300 odd entries. If they had restructured the course (a little) and just did a 10K, it would probably have sold out.
I did the 10Km event in Lanzarote in 2019. I really enjoyed it. As you say, it's a brilliant series of running events that they offer. Something for everyone. Running in the sunshine in December is something to be experienced!
Well done on all your running achievements!
Darren C.
Lack of entries I imagine. Is there a Irish involvement in the running of this as it seems to be heavily promoted by Irish runners? By the way congrats to Alex on his Homeric like adventure in Sparta.
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