Manila Marathon

30°C at dawn, 100% humidity and 42 km ahead in the city, that's the promise every year from the Philippines Airlines Manila Marathon to those who had the good idea to sign up 😄.

The 44th edition of this marathon founded in 1982 arrives in May in the Philippine capital Manila, and with it a major novelty 🙌 : a flat and fast route, designed for quick times ⏱️. In itself, it's great news for the legs 🦵, and a slightly suspect promise when you know the only enemy here isn’t a "hill" but tropical heat 🌴. The marathon the most devoted in the Philippines 🇵🇭 has missed no edition since 1982, which clearly gives it more consistency than most gym memberships 🏋️‍♀️.

You’ll have a choice between four distances : the full marathon for those who signed their death sentence with full awareness, the half marathon if you’re a bit more reasonable, the 10 km if the event’s curiosity got to you and the 5 km if you read "30°C at dawn 😳" and still said yes, total respect 👏. This marathon raised the bar right from its first edition in 1982, literally 🏅. The East German Waldemar Cierpinski, double Olympic marathon champion in 1976 and 1980, the only one with the Ethiopian Abebe Bikila to achieve this double, had finished the course in 2h14'27, a record that still stands forty years later. To put that in perspective: the legendary Bill Rogers, winner of four Boston and four New York marathons, had triumphantly announced a time of 2h20, Cierpinski beat him by almost six minutes without seeming to sweat more than the spectators 😅. The real star of this first edition is however a certain Joan Laput, 11 years old 😱 who finished the marathon in 3h28'22, the first Filipino woman to cross the line, and incidentally in 5th grade. Some adults still haven’t digested the news, and honestly we understand 🤯.

Manille isn’t an ordinary city, and you can feel it within the first kilometers 🏛️. Founded in 1571 by the Spanish conquistador Miguel López de Legazpi on the ruins of a Tagalog city, it was the first city in the world to establish continuous trade routes across the Pacific 🛍️. In other words, Manila invented globalization before the concept even existed, and all without a single video conference, beware 🌏. Its historic district Intramuros, "within the walls" in Latin, is the 16th-century fortified city whose walls are 2 meters thick and 7 meters high, and which survived everything history threw at it 🏰. The San Agustin Church, completed in 1607 and listed as UNESCO World Heritage ⛪️, withstood earthquakes, typhoons 🌀 and bombardments of the Second World War while everything around it collapsed. The Fort Santiago, where the national hero José Rizal spent his last hours before execution in 1896, still looms imposingly on the riverbank Pasig 💦. A city that has endured the Spanish Inquisition, American colonization and two world wars deserves at least 42 km of respect 😶.

And when the legs give out and the medal is around your neck 🏅, the Philippines deliver with a generosity that rivals the climate 😋. L'adobo, a meat marinated in vinegar, soy sauce and garlic, simmered until tender, is the country’s unofficial national dish, available in as many recipes as there are islands 🏝️, i.e. more than 7,000 🍖. Basically, you can come back every year and never eat the same adobo twice, which is a great reason to sign up for the next marathon 🤪. The lechon, whole roasted pig on a spit for hours, is the absolute star of all Philippine celebrations 🥳. And after 42 km in tropical heat, you’ll have earned it. To finish smoothly, the halo-halo ("mix-mix" in Tagalog) is a shaved-ice dessert with candied fruits, sweet beans, colorful jellies and purple yam 🍧: an organized chaos in a glass that looks exactly like what your brain feels at km 35. Order two, just to be safe 😜.

Come on, come and give your ankles a workout in Manila ! ✈️