Havana Marathon in Cuba

Last week, I ran a race I had wanted to do for the better part of a decade – Marabana Cuba, a Marathon in Havana. It was a pretty unique experience – both to visit Cuba and run the race – and I’m glad to have had the opportunity to do it.

Overall summary: this was one of the most entertaining races from a logistics perspective I have ever run. Highlights include:

• Start time shenanigans: The race was supposed to start at 6:30am on Sunday. The day before the race (Saturday), they decided to change the start time for the Half and Full to 6:00am, which is pretty late in the game for a change like that. They also decided to … not tell anyone? No emails, no social media, nothing on the website. I was running with a group from Marathon Tours, so the organizers had figured it out somehow, but there were a lot of runners who did NOT figure it out and were 20-30 minutes late to the start.
• Me and 24 of my closest friends: There were about 3000 runners, and only 125 of those were marathon runners. Of those, only 25 were women. I don’t think I’ve ever run a major city marathon with such a small field. The course was two half-marathon loops, so the second loop was quite empty. Running on a closed road all by myself in a capital city was a really unique experience!
• Bags of soda: There was no on-course calories beyond bags of soda (see below). What was in the bags? Nobody knew. It tasted like off brand Coca Cola. I oviously tried it because … why not?
• Analog timing mats: Only one – at the start/finish, which was also the halfway mark. Everywhere else was someone with a clipboard hand-writing bib numbers. I had seen this before as a tracking strategy, but mostly at trail races where it’s hard to get timing mats out to the course.
• Don’t get lost: The race directions said they might open the course back up to traffic towards the end, so I very carefully studied the course, downloaded a ton of maps, etc ahead of the race. This ended up not happening and the course marshalls were very effective at protecting us from traffic (although they seemed to not appreciate it when we thanked them, in any language! All business)
• DNF – JK: When I got to the finish line (4:26 – not bad for 3 weeks after a hundred), I wanted to check results. It said I DNFd for … going too quickly. Obviously fake news because I was breaking no records. A half an hour later, they had “fixed” the results – I came in first in my age group (of three people). They didn’t tell me a time or splits – I don’t think they were pleased with how the technology was performing.
• World Record: When I looked up my results online later, there were some question marks:
  • Apparently I finished in 4:22 (definitely not the case – it was 4:26).
  • I also apparently set a world record in the half marathon, running my second half in 55 minutes – I’m actually quite confused about this given that the only actual timing mats they had were at mile 0, 13.1, and 26.2.
  • The race also apparently started at 5am (“Gun time” – see below).
  • Edit two weeks later: They updated the website and apparently I have now run the whole race in 2:09:47, which is not only good enough to win overall (for both men and women), but also a world record time (womens current WR is 2:11). See you at the Olympics.

Anyway, I’m not going to debate it because I imagine that will probably somehow make it worse.

One of my favorite parts of the entire trip was at the finish line. There was a group that was leading salsa line dancing, so I did that with random other runners for a while. The dancing in Cuba is so happy and full of energy, and this was no exception. There was also a guy selling ice cream out of a styrofoam cooler, and that was delicious.

Overall – highly entertaining race in a very unique city. Glad to have done it. Saw some very cool sites, had some great experiences, met some lovely people. If anyone has plans to do this or to visit Cuba, let me know. Happy to chat!

Photos below.