The plan for the trip (which ended up being a nightmare...)

I planned the whole trip around Barcelona marathon, but realised when we got to Andorra that I had booked it for the wrong weekend, being in Barcelona on the Sunday 9th rather than 16th. Whilst running in Andorra, I remembered that I booked the flights and hotels before race registration had openened, based on the 2024 race being on 10th March. A few months later, when I signed up for the race, I didn't realise that the date wasn't what I expected. With the pure volume of logistics involved in trying to run a marathon in every country, I'm bound to make a few mistakes. Although it was quite annoying making a mistake because I was trying to be too organised. Lesson learnt, don't make any assumptions about races until dates are confirmed.

The run

After knowing that I wouldn't be able to run the official race, I though the next best option would be to run the official route on my own. However, after arriving in Barcelona during a busy saturday afternoon, I realised that the sheer volume of people and the grid nature of the a lot of the city would render this impossible without closed roads. The stop start nature of a run getting caught at red lights every 30 seconds would not be fun.


At 0500 I awoke and procrastinated a fair bit before leaving the hostel a little after 6. We were staying in a private room in a youth hostel on Pasaig de Gracia, a few doors down from one of the famous Gaudi houses. I began by heading straight towards the sea and hit water after 10 to 15 minutes as we were around a mile or so inland. I then turned left and headed north-east ish in the general Badalona direction. As was hoped, the paths that ran along the coastline were much less interrupted than the city streets. I could run pretty much continuously until meeting the river that splits Barcelona and Badalona (I'd never heard of Badalona before and not sure how 'independent' the people see it from the larger city).


This first segment of the run was very quiet as it was still dark and most people weren't up and about yet. As I was running in a general North-East direction along a South-East facing coast in the Northern hemisphere, I was hoping to see at least a bit of a nice sunrise that morning. It have been too foggy to allow for it, or my geographical knowledge is lacking. Either way, the sky just generally got bluer without any sun in sight. There were some nice spots along the coast which would definitely be welcome in my beechless hometown of London. The sound of the large creshing waves also beats the sound of late night / early morning London. I also ran straight past an athletics track and took a mental note for later.

However, the sceneray took a turn for the worse as the sun came up and I travelled further North. There was some sort of power station or something just before the river that just wasn't much fun to run past. After crossing the bridge to the other side, I was greeted by a very rundown house that looked like it was either abandoned or being used as a drug-den. I then did a half a lap of a block before the non-stop graffiti was my third signal to just turn around. So I did. Badalona may well be a great area and I'm sure there's lots of cool stuff to explore there. But after already missing out on the real run I wanted to do, I wanted to salvage whatever I could and not waste any more time in depressing looking spaces.

The sun was fully up as I headed back past the power station and towards the centre of Barcelona again and there were now considerably more runners about. Seeing lots of runners alongside you on a Sunday morning in a foreign city is the general confirmatino you need to know you're running in one of the better spots. When I say alongside, most travelling in the same direction were briefly behind me before quickly moving past into the horizon. My legs were (and body as a whole was) very tired. There were also now some surfers braving the waves. I've never learnt how to surf but like to think that I would have done if the lifestyle was as accessible as it is inn Barcelona.


I came back past the athletics track that I now realised was part of a larger sporting complex as there were a few people gathered around the outside of the main building. I decided to head in to see if it was open. "Es posible, usar?" and a point over my shoulder to the track got the picture across to the lady working the reception desk. My Spanish is at the level where I can plan one or two sentences but very much struggle with any sort of fluent immediate back and forth conversation. Luckily after three or four second of confusion listening to her response, I picked up "nueve" and understood that the track would be opening at 9. I looked at my watch and said thank you, then went out to kill the remaining forty minutes I'd have to wait. All this meant was a few more miles I was going to do anyway, up and down the same path. I came back at nine and after a bit of difficulty figuring out the gate and that I had to actually go back to the main building to buy a ticket, I was in!

At €6.something, it was far from the cheapest track entry out there, especially when I'd only be using it for about an hour. That was irrelevnt though as it was a fantastic track to experience the price I would have paid for anything like this to get my moral levels back up was a lot higher. The lanes were blue, the surrounding palm trees were tall and the sound of waves just the other side of the wall and path were great. I placed my camel-back bag by the finish line and got down to some laps. Whilst steady laps of a track can be mindnumbingly boring at the worst of times, they were a nice break from the stretching beach paths here. With alll the marathons I'd been running, I hadn't been 'properly training' for a while and hadn't stepped foot on a track for a good number of months. I couldn't help opening my legs a little round the bend for some fuller strides.


I thought that I probably had about a four mile journey back to the hostel from the track, so I ended my last lap as I hit 22 miles and made my way to the exit. I was then back on the beachside paths heading towards the centre of town. There wasn't much excitement to be found in the return journey. When I got back to around the point where I thought I wanted to cut in away from the water, I got my phone out for google maps to find the exact route, which brought me through Gothic quarter and back up to the hostel pretty much exactly when I wanted, a little over 26.2 miles.


Standard procedures then followed for what was effectively a mini weekend city break wrapped in a larger trip - I washed and got changed before Ciara and I headed out for some sight seeing. We first needed some food so went to an Irish pub for an early lunch. What was intended to be a quick stop took over an hour as the two bar staff were comically ovewhelmed, having not expected such a turn out four hours before the start of the rugby. After finally getting our food, we carried on walking around the city. The highlight was definitely the Sagrada Familia. Another Gaudi design - It was by far the most unique looking Church I'd ever seen and it was drawing massive crowds. Unfortunately we could only admire from the outside as it was either closed on Sundays or all the entry tickets were sold out. I had planned to meet a friend from school who was now living in Barcelona but unfortunately the confusion with the marathon date meant that I was a week early for that as well and he was out of town. Our 6 am flight the next morning meant that the wine we'd bought in France had to go. When we stopped back in the room before dinner, I sat out on the balcony for an hour or so whilst Ciara had a nap. I had a nice little set up to relax for a while - cheap wine, plastic cup, baguette and chocolate, massage gun, laptop for YoutTube videos on the hostel wifi. We had dinner in another Irish pub (it's very important to immerse yourself in the culture of any new city) before a relatively ealry night. We were up and out at 4 in the taxi for a Vueling Airlines flight to Nice to take on one of the smallest countries on the planet - Monaco.