The 2026 Barcelona Marathon ranks up there with the best events I’ve taken part in over the years, check out my list here. Everything about this event was enjoyable. The organisation starting with the signup to the finish line queues, the support on the streets, the volunteers, the course, the aid stations, everything was very well thought out and executed. It goes without saying that if I hadn’t put the training into my marathon build, things may have felt much worse. When you are prepared, everything seems to appear a little more enjoyable.
2026 Barcelona Marathon Prep
My training block for the 2026 Barcelona Marathon was 2 weeks longer than normal. I felt like I needed to get some discipline into my life and that the best way to do this was to choose a marathon and start training. This always gets me in a much better frame of mind when it comes to focus and discipline. This certainly was the case this time around too. I had been drifting along with no real goal after the 2025 London Marathon. I ran the Bath-Bristol Railway 50k in October, but I wasn’t prepared to run a good race. That was more a get around it and enjoy some time with friends and family. Barcelona was a real target and I was to be going for a good result.
I had heard good things about the course and the event in general, so I was excited to get started. On November 10th I began an 18 week build for Barcelona. I wasn’t in particularly great shape, but not a bad starting point either. Endurance is generally not a problem for me, speed and pace is where I need to need work as it is the first thing that goes after a short layoff. This comes down to strength and conditioning, intensity work, getting down to race weight and focus on all the little things. I’m a big proponent of making the simple things easy, which is also my coaching philosophy. Let’s build the habits that make getting the work to fit into our daily routine. Make it easy to make good decisions. It’s far easier than it sounds. This method of training has been a great benefit to me and the athlete’s I’ve coached through the years.
I focus on my nutrition much more when I’m in training and this build was no different. I focus on my macros and getting at least 20% of my calories from protein as I make my way through the weeks. You can see my stats from the entire 18 week block towards the end of this post. Overall I was pretty close to that target. I can always do better.
Marathon Expo and Pre-Race
Without going into too much detail here, it was a fairly good training block, but not one that would inspire bullet-proof confidence going into race day. Especially considering the last couple of training blocks. I have to admit, for Valencia 2024 and London 2025 I felt much more confident and that I was in better shape than I was for Barcelona. It took much longer to reach race weight and I never got to where I wanted to be. This isn’t a huge problem, but every kg helps. In the end, my best sessions of the 18 weeks came in the last 3 weeks of training, so that put me in a decent state of mind come race day. This training block is the perfect example of trusting the process. Nothing really came together until I hit the taper and peaked on race day.
I travelled up to a city called Sitges where we stayed for a few nights before and after the marathon. It’s a 5 hour drive from where we live in Alicante, but that wasn’t all that bad all things considered. Sitges a short train ride into Barcelona, for the expo and to the race start. I went to the expo on Saturday morning and upon arriving there was a short queue that moved along nicely. Inside, the place was packed but it had everything a good expo could have. The organisation was superb with bibs separated out in groups of 500 meaning the lines were quite short and moved along quickly.
I grabbed my bib, t-shirt and a few gels before grabbing a quick photo. When leaving the expo, the line to get in had to be three-thousand deep and went on for the better part of a kilometre. My timing was perfectly lucky. All the stories I heard however, was that the line moved along quite quickly despite the large queue. From there, I heading out to grab a coffee and put the feet up for the rest of the day.
At 5pm we headed out for my evening meal giving myself enough time to find a restaurant that was open and serving Italian. The one thing about Spain is that you do need to plan your meals pretty carefully as it can be difficult to find a main meal before 8pm. We did however and Spaghetti Bolognese and half a margherita pizza later I was back in our hotel room by 7:30pm.
I had an early start as the train in was at 6:20am so an early 4:30 wake up. I had my breakfast of a white bagel with honey and peanut butter along with two bowls of Rice Krispies, two small cups of coffee and a 500ml of water. We made the early train, which arrived at 7:10am. I found a coffee shop that was open which allowed me to use the toilet, then I found the bag drop and went for a short jog to the starting pen which opened at 7:55am. I got there a little after that, soaked up some sunshine and got myself towards the front of the red wave.
2026 Barcelona Marathon Race
The starting pens are always an exciting time. The organisers played some inspirational and adrenaline pumping music including songs from Metallica and Queen. Just before the starting gun, a live opera singer belted out Barcelona before we hit the road for real. Everything kicked off without any issues. My plan was to go with the 3:00 pacers and take the work out of pacing myself. However, the water stations were hectic with so many runners and congestion, that sticking with the 3 hour pacers soon turned into more hassle than it was worth. I let the pacers go and ran my own race after the second water stop at 7.5km. We were going a little fast for a 3 hour mark anyway, and figured I’d be OK.
The course was fantastic. Some slight pulls and some slight downhills, which I like better than a flat course as there is always more benefit from the descents than the uphills take away. I was expecting something to throw me some bother at some point, but fortunately, the miles ticked over nicely. Mile after mile I was fairly steady with never much more than a minute difference in each 5k split. As always, I took a little water at every water stop. For on-course nutrition, I took a total of 5 Maurten gels, 2 x 160g without caffeine, 2 x 100g with caffeine and 1 x 100g without caffeine. I took the last one at mile 23 and felt pretty strong for most of the race. Mid-way in mile 23 however, I found myself approaching the mouth of the pain cave and by the time mile 24 hit I was well within it. But that said, I made it this far feeling good, I could push through to the end. It was my quads that seemed to be taking the brunt of the discomfort but it was nearly manageable.
At this point my overall pace was around 6:50/mile which is below the threshold to break 3 hours and doing my runners math figured I had done enough to break it. However, as I got closer to the finish I realised I was well over the distance, so that was the 3 hour target gone.
Even though I didn’t get under that target, I still loved this race. Everything about it. The supporters on the street, with the exception of a few who crossed the street in front of us runners, which can be disruptive, most of them were there making noise and cheering everyone on.
Approaching the Arc de triomf was something special with the blue carpet under foot. What a spectacular monument to run through to finish a marathon. It reminded me of runner through the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin. With a final push, I crossed the line in 3:01:47, a time I’m incredibly proud of. I got through the crowds and congratulated as many other runners as I could before receiving my medal, thanking each volunteer I touched along the way through the finish. I grabbed my goody bag and a few cups of water before exiting with a big smile on my face.
After leaving the finish area, it was over to the bag drop for a quick selfie and a phone call to my wife to meet up. This will go down as one of my favourite marathon experiences. Maybe it is because I felt good going around. Maybe because I felt strong after finishing. Maybe because I didn’t expect to run so well after a strange build up that took longer than normal. Whatever it was, I loved it and would highly recommend it to anyone looking to run a target marathon race in the spring. I put this in my top 3 events worldwide. Well done Barcelona and to all the runners who ran this spectacular race!
2026 Barcelona Marathon Full Training Stats
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Well Done John – really enjoyed reading your report! I want to run Barcelona Marathon now!