Stavanger Marathon

Stavanger Marathon starts and finishes in the city center of Stavanger, Norway, on the last Saturday of August. The race offers a 42.2 km marathon, a 21.1 km half marathon, and a relay, and it is organized by GTI Friidrettsklubb. The marathon is a road-and-trail style city race rather than a pure asphalt run, with a little over half the route on asphalt and the rest on runnable gravel. The full marathon links two half-marathon routes: 3-Sjøersløpet and Stavanger Halvmaraton. Runners go around three lakes and along both Hafrsfjord and Gandsfjorden, with about 300 meters of climbing across the distance. The organizers provide pace groups from 3:30 through 4:30, which fits a race aimed at steady marathoners as well as faster runners. The course records are 2:33:03 for men and 2:51:06 for women, and one race write-up summed up the route as “seeing all of Norway in miniature.”