Sunday 20th May 2018 Riga Half Marathon No 7 Latvia

Sunday 20th May 2018 No 7

Richard 01:55:33 Jackie 02:13:11

Our first time in Riga and our first time in Latvia , and what a brilliant place it is.The weather was lovely the flowers were out , plenty of bars , restaurants and shops . It is small compared to other cities we have visited but plenty too see and easy to get around . The high light for me was Riga Central Market, one of the biggest in Europe . The main structures of the market are five pavilions constructed by reusing old German Zeppelin hangars .The market is 72,300 square meters wide with more than 3,000 trade stands. Everything was on sale from 400 euro tins of Caviar to home made 3 euro slippers .

The Riga Marathon is a relatively new tradition , but it now attracts top professional athletes and is the only race in Northern Europe with a Bronze IAAF label and is hoping to achieve Gold label by welcoming 35.000 participants from 70 countries . The economic impact for 2017 was calculated at 4.5 million Euros , attracting 4000 runners from overseas generated 2.5 million Euros. Each overseas runner brings 1.2 travel companions staying in Latvia for an average of 3.4 days .

35,000 participants

^{Riga is a fairly small city and the route covered most of it crossing the river twice and going through the Old Town . What I really liked about this event was it also included a Marathon a 10k and a 6km . Every race was competitively run but the shorter distances allowed families and children to take part . The event started at 8.30 am and ran through till 4 pm with closed roads for the whole time so we had a lovely traffic free afternoon after our race finished .}