With just two events under its belt so far, the French Riviera Marathon has worked hard to gain its status as the second largest running event in France, losing out to the Paris Marathon, which celebrated its 33^rd edition last April 2009. This relatively new sporting event welcomed 10,438 runners in 2009 and is once again ready to race all over again on Sunday 14^th November 2010.

Around 12,000 runners are expected to take on the 42km distance between Nice and Cannes in 2010. Perhaps the most energetic way to get a real tour of the beautiful Cote D’Azur scenery, the marathon starts at Promenade des Anglais in Nice then goes to Laurent du Var, Cagnes sur Mer, Villeneuve, Loubet, Antibes Juan les Pins, Vallauris Golfe Juan, before finally finishing in La Croisette in Cannes. Around 92% of this scenic journey is spent running along the Mediterranean Sea and the crisp autumn weather will provide the perfect running conditions at an estimated temperature of around 12-14 degrees.

This year’s event is expected to welcome around 60,000 spectators, all of whom are able to travel to each location for just 5€ on an all day pass. An impressive 45 nationalions represented their countries in 2009, the highest of which being Italy at 26% and the United Kingdom at 24.7%. However, the big winners of 2009 were the Ethiopians. Kasime Adilo Roba finished the race in the record time of 2 hours 10 minutes and 17 seconds, beating Kenyan, Jacob Kitur’s record of 2 hours and 11 minutes from the previous year. Fellow Ethiopian, Merima Mohamed also broke records last year as the first woman to cross the finish line after 2 hours 33 minutes and 56 seconds.

If you want the chance to break 2009’s records there’s still time to register for this year’s marathon.  Registering by the 30^th September costs 65€ and will save you 10€ as it goes up to 75€ until the deadline of 30^th October.

Just visit this website to be part of the experience.

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