In recent years, we have repeatedly heard about top times on Spanish soil. Valencia and Barcelona in particular are known as fast places and attract many runners from all over the world. One of these internationally renowned races is the Mitja Marató Barcelona, for which around 25,000 runners were registered this year and which we did not want to miss. At the same time, we were able to combine our start with visiting good university friends, so that the motivation to travel to the Catalan metropolis was twice as great.

The fact that fast runners do not only come to Barcelona for sightseeing reasons was already noticeable at the start. There were so many elbows and arms flying around that you had to be glad to get through the first two minutes of the race without any problems. What followed was a half marathon personal best chase on a grand scale. You could tell that everyone was giving their all here. Everyone wanted to do a very good race and ideally finish with a new personal best. Natalie and I also gave our best and were fast.

In the manageable shade of some palm trees, the finish line slowly approached after a good hour of running time. In 1:20:37 and 1:10:57 hours, respectively, we were able to achieve the fast times we had hoped for on the fast Spanish asphalt. While Natalie missed her best time by 21 seconds, I beat mine by 23 seconds. Top result and a great first big race in 2023!

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