Valencia
Marathon

A Club Race That Became a Record Course

The Valencia Marathon began on 29 March 1981 as the Marathon Popular de Valencia, organised by a local running club, the Sociedad Deportiva Correcaminos. A study from the University of Valencia puts the first field at no more than eight hundred runners. On the same Sunday, London ran its first marathon. The two races then went very different ways for thirty years.

Valencia's turn came late. The club still organises the race, with the city council, and since 2014 it has carried the name of the Fundación Trinidad Alfonso, the foundation of the supermarket owner Juan Roig. In 2016 it became the first Spanish marathon to receive the IAAF Gold Label; in 2020 World Athletics gave it the Platinum Label, the top tier of its road-race labels, which was being awarded for the first time.

It is not one of the Abbott World Marathon Majors. The Majors are a closed circuit with its own series and its own history; Valencia sits outside it, in the same Platinum tier, and competes with it on the one thing it can measure. Since 2017 it has set a men's course record six times and a women's course record five times.

Flat, at Sea Level, Finishing on Water

The course is built for one purpose. It runs on long, straight boulevards at sea level, with no climb worth the name, and it finishes on a walkway over the water at the City of Arts and Sciences — the blue carpet that runners and race reports alike now treat as the race's signature. The guides disagree on the exact elevation figures; none of them disagrees that the profile is flat.

The date helps as much as the road. Valencia is run at the start of December, when the Mediterranean coast is usually cool, and on the calendar it comes after the autumn Majors — Berlin in September, Chicago in October, New York in November. It had no history to sell, so it sold a flat road and a late date, and the times did the rest.

Eleven Course Records, 913 Seconds

Before 2017 the men's course record was 2:06:13, from 2015. Sammy Kitwara took 58 seconds off it in 2017 with 2:05:15. Leul Gebrselassie ran 2:04:31 the next year, Kinde Atanaw 2:03:51 the year after, and in the elite-only race of 2020 Evans Chebet outsprinted Lawrence Cherono to win in 2:03:00. Then came the biggest single cut: Kelvin Kiptum's 2:01:53 in 2022, 67 seconds in one race. Sisay Lemma shaved the last five in 2023, with 2:01:48.

The women's record fell further, because it started further back. It stood at 2:24:48 before Ashete Bekere ran 2:21:14 in 2018. Roza Dereje took it to 2:18:30 in 2019, Peres Jepchirchir to 2:17:16 in 2020, Amane Beriso to 2:14:58 in 2022, and on 7 December 2025 Joyciline Jepkosgei ran 2:14:00 — the fastest women's time of that year and the fourth-fastest in history. Between the two races, 913 seconds have come off the records.

Read the abacus by rows. The men's record lost four full minutes and 25 seconds in six years; the women's lost ten minutes and 48 seconds in seven. Of the eleven cuts, the largest by far was Bekere's 214 seconds, which says more about how soft the old women's mark was than about any one runner. The smallest, Lemma's five, is the hardest kind: the last seconds before a course runs out of road to give.

The Debut Course, and Kelvin Kiptum

Valencia's other speciality is first marathons. Peres Jepchirchir's 2:17:16 in 2020 was her debut. On 4 December 2022 Kelvin Kiptum of Kenya, the surprise winner that day, ran his first marathon here in 2:01:53, with a second half of 60:15. Guinness World Records lists it as the fastest debut ever run; behind him Alexander Mutiso also debuted, in 2:03:29. Kiptum went on to Chicago, where in October 2023 he ran 2:00:35, a world record. He died on 11 February 2024 in a road accident in Kenya, with his coach, Gervais Hakizimana. He was 24.

Not every debut works. Joshua Cheptegei, the 5000 and 10,000 m world record holder on the track, chose Valencia for his first marathon in 2023, ran with the leaders through halfway and finished 37th in 2:08:59; he called it the most powerful lesson of his life. A year later, on 1 December 2024, Sabastian Sawe of Kenya debuted with 2:02:05, the fastest marathon of the year and twelve seconds outside Kiptum's debut mark. In April 2026 Sawe ran 1:59:30 in London, the first ratified marathon under two hours.

The Night on the Track, and the Half

Valencia's most famous records were not set on the marathon course at all. On 7 October 2020, at an event called the NN Valencia World Record Day, two athletes of the NN Running Team broke world records on the track of the Estadi del Turia. Joshua Cheptegei ran 26:11.00 for 10,000 m, beating the 26:17.53 that Kenenisa Bekele had held since 2005. Letesenbet Gidey ran 14:06.62 for 5000 m, beating Tirunesh Dibaba's 14:11.15 from 2008.

The two have aged differently. Cheptegei's 26:11.00 is still the world record. Gidey's 5000 m mark was broken in 2025 by Beatrice Chebet, with 13:58.06. Neither belongs to the marathon: the 26:11.00 is a track time over 25 laps, and mixing it up with the December race is the most common mistake made about Valencia.

The city also has a separate race, the Valencia Half Marathon, run in October. Gidey ran 1:02:52 there on 24 October 2021, in her first half marathon; it is still the fastest women's time ever run at the distance, set in a mixed race.

A Spanish Race Again: Records, Floods, 2025

For Spain the race is where the national records live. On 3 December 2023 Tariku Novales ran 2:05:48 here, a Spanish record that beat the 2:06:35 Ayad Lamdassem had run in Valencia in 2020, and Majida Maayouf ran 2:21:27, a Spanish women's record. Both are covered in our season post Spain 2023, and the longer story in the history of athletics in Spain.

The 2024 edition went ahead a month after the floods of 29 October 2024, which killed more than 200 people in the province of Valencia. The organisers confirmed the race on 15 November; the decision was debated, and some runners withdrew. The campaign attached to it, Valencia runs 4 Valencia, set aside about one million euros for the affected towns.

The 2025 race, on 7 December, went to John Korir of Kenya in 2:02:24, ahead of Amanal Petros of Germany (2:04:03) and Awet Kibrab of Norway (2:04:25); Suguru Osako, fourth in 2:04:55, set a Japanese record. Jepkosgei's 2:14:00 led the women, with Jepchirchir second in 2:14:43 and Chloé Herbiet third in 2:20:38, a Belgian record. More than 30,000 runners finished, and the organisers counted nine national records. The 2026 edition is scheduled for 6 December.

Sponsor Kit on the Blue Carpet

The house rule for reading any race: championships mean federation kit, and the big road races mean sponsor kit. Nobody runs the Valencia course in national colours. The leaders wear the uniforms of their shoe contracts and their teams — Sawe is an adidas athlete, and the 2020 track night was staged by the NN Running Team in its 2020–21 cycle.

Team kit · in the archiveINEOS X Nike NN Running Team Pro Elite 2020/2021 Women T-ShirtTeam-issued kit from the NN Running Team's 2020–21 cycle — the season of the NN Valencia World Record Day, when two of its athletes broke world records on the Turia track.150,00 €View piece →

The other lines behind the fast road races each have their own page here — Nike Pro Elite, adidas Pro Elite 2024 and Rosa & Co. — and the rail below holds one athlete-issued piece from four of them. For the Spanish side of the story, the federation kit lives in our Spain season posts.