HCA Marathon

HCA Marathon is a city marathon in Odense, Denmark, starting and finishing at Odense Idrætspark. The race is named after Hans Christian Andersen, Odense’s famous fairy-tale writer, and the programme also includes a half marathon, a 10-kilometre option called Run the Last 10, and a 4.2-kilometre MiniMarathon for children and young people. The marathon course runs through the streets of Odense, with traffic kept off the route for six hours. Organisers bill it as the fastest marathon route in Denmark and even the world, and they also promote it as the marathon with the cleanest air. The MiniMarathon is one tenth of a marathon, uses a car-free route, and finishes in the same place as the main race. Foreign runners are drawn partly by the Hans Christian Andersen link, while the shorter races make the day work for families as well as marathon runners.