18th IAAF World Half Marathon Championships - Birmingham 2009

News

What makes a Great World Half Marathon Course?

04 Oct 2009

Perhaps like no other, the World Half-marathon championships provide a greater test of a runner’s ability to deal with varied conditions more than any other event. Year upon year, they do not know what to expect.

On Sunday, the IAAF/EDF Energy World Half Marathon Championships – the 18th staging of the competition – returns to Britain where it began in 1992.

This time, the twisting roads of Birmingham, one of Europe’s most vibrant and modern city’s, will be packed as Paula Radcliffe, the country’s leading woman runner, spearheads the home team. They will compete on roads surrounded by hotels, shops, houses and schools and a clutch of iconic settings on a day where the signs are that the weather will be good.

But if those competing here want to gain experience for 12 months time, the World Half-marathon will not allow it and there in lies the fascination of the competition.

Nanning in China is the next venue, where in October the average temperature is approximately 25.3c, so whatever is gained next weekend will be a one-off experience.

One man knows about half-marathons more than most. Brendan Foster, the Olympic 10,000m bronze medallist from Montreal in 1976, created the biggest of them all, the Great North Run. He said: “A Half-marathon can be a journey through history.”

As Birmingham will prove, that is very much the case. On Sunday, the runners will pass by Edgbaston Cricket Ground, Cadbury’s World, one of Britain’s leading tourist attractions, and the International Convention Centre, a leading conference venue in Europe which in 1998 staged the 24th G8 Summit.

In 1992, the Great North combined to become the first IAAF World Half-marathon and set the stage for what lied ahead. Starting in Newcastle, the race takes you along a route through the North East and finally ends by the sea front in South Shields.

Benson Masya, of Kenya, won the men’s race while Scotland’s Liz McColgan gave Britain a lift with victory.

Four years later, she was back and on this occasion mixing it with the late holiday tourists in Palma, Majorca, on a sticky Sunday morning in September.

Radcliffe won the first of her three titles in Veracruz, Mexico, in 2000, before retaining it in Bristol 12 months later and then being triumphant again in 2003 on a beautiful Saturday morning around the harbour in the Portuguese setting of Vilamoura.

Unlike a marathon, where runners return each year to a course that is the same in the same city, the Half-marathon has the capacity to mix and match and become a test of a runner’s ability to tackle a circuit that poses more than one threat.

Often a Half-marathon can be on a looped course, so if there is a patch that did not work for you the first time, beware because it is not too far away again.
Foster said: “The idea of going from the city to the beach is something that people do in their normal lives, so for athletes to run that way is a great experience.

“When we launched the Great North Run, that was our vision. Had it been a marathon, we could have finished 13 miles out at sea!
“Many of the cities have staged this event have been near the beach so they can combine both. Others that do not provide another a great examination for runners on the streets of a city where they can take them through the history of the place. The half-marathon has a great narrative of where it is being staged.”

Whatever story Birmingham will bring to the history of the World Half, bottle it up and savour it as a one-off because few events can have such a special resonance as that.

Keep an eye on www.birminghamwhm2009.com for further big race build-up!