BENGALURU: In February this year, Bengaluru-based Upendra Tripathi received news that left him ecstatic: His trip to Antarctica was confirmed for March 2020. The itinerary includes an ultra-relaxing cruise from Buenos Aires to Antarctica and a trip to Chile as well.
But the 45-year-old vice president at Semiconductor Engineering is most kicked about the 42-km marathon he will run in the continent next year and his registration was finally confirmed after a two-year wait-listing period. This isn’t the first time Tripathi will run a marathon while he travels, since he is also taking part in a run at Durban, South Africa.
Along with this, the runner is also looking forward to exploring Cape Town and Johannesburg with his wife. Of the (minimum) six trips he takes in a year, almost all are centred around a marathon or running.
Tripathi isn’t alone. Like him, several other Bengalureans have also been actively travelling to different parts of the world to take part in some of the biggest running events. “A runner will inevitably find a way to plan a running event around his travel or a trip around his event,” explained Ashok Nath. The veteran runner too has an upcoming trip to Boston in April and South Africa in June.
According to Gauri Jayaram, founder of Active Holiday Company, while earlier, people travelled to see places and click photos in front of popular tourist attractions, today, they travel to run races.
“The idea is to explore a place through running. These races are designed to give runners a flavour of the city as well. For example, the London marathon takes a runner through Big Ben, Tower Bridge and Buckingham Palace. Similarly, the New York marathon ensures that a runner passes through all five burrows of the city,” she explains.
While some runners prefer to just run the race and return, Jayaram adds that it isn’t uncommon for people to extend their trip beyond the race and explore neighbouring destinations as well. “Often, London is combined with Scotland and Berlin with East Europe or the trip is extended so the runner can experience Oktoberfest as well,” she says.
Gaining popularity
When Jayaram founded the travel company in 2014, she had only 10 runners on board for a marathon in London. Cut to 2019 and the Berlin marathon has 150 confirmed applications and 25 people on a wait list. According to Jayaram, ‘marathon tourism’ has been around for almost 35 years in the West but started gaining popularity in India only five years ago. “Most of the runners have networked internationally and there’s a craze about the World Majors. The trend we notice here is a trickle of what is observed abroad,” she explains.
The Abbot World Marathon Majors takes place in six places all over the world – London, Berlin, Boston, Tokyo, Chicago and New York City – and are some of the most popular destinations runners look at visiting, says Jayaram. Amsterdam, Helsinki, Prague and Antarctica feature next on the list, with about 16 per cent of travellers from Bengaluru.
Planning the trip
Bhumika Patel, Global Program Manager at IBM, goes on at least two to three marathon trips a year and has, so far, run in London, Berlin, Frankfurt, Chicago, Dubai and Tokyo. Research, she says, plays a huge role in planning such trips and one has to account for the distance between the race venue and the hotel, whether there will be other runners to interact with, and of course, the food options available.
Unlike regular trips, where the food consumed does not impact other activities, the meal a runner has before a race plays a huge role in their running experience. “I usually look for Indian or Italian restaurants so I can get a bowl of curd rice or pasta, which helps with carbo-loading,” she explains.
When it comes to planning the trip, Patel, Nath and Tripathi all prefer relying on a tour operator to make the job easier. “It isn’t always about just the race. The whole package, from the time you leave till you return, matters. Going through a tour operator saves some time. One shouldn’t miss the forest for the trees. More importantly, it lets me focus on my core competence, which is running, while I let the travel expert focus on theirs in finding me the right hotel, getting me registered for the race, etc,” says Nath.
Currently, most runners choose to go solo for a race (unless their family members are also runners; according to Jayaram, only 15 per cent runners travel with their family for such races). But Nath foresees a change in the trend, where he feels that soon, the number of families joining a runner post race day might increase too.