[ RACE.2026 ] 🇪🇸 Valencia, Spain
Valencia Trinidad Alfonso Marathon Training Plan
6 December 2026
Valencia calls itself the city of running, and the marathon is the argument: sea-level flat, December-cool, engineered end to end for personal bests, finishing on a walkway over water at the City of Arts and Sciences.
What the course is actually like
A single loop on wide avenues with elevation change measured in single-digit metres - as close to genuinely flat as a big-city marathon gets. The route passes through the historic centre and out toward the coast before returning to the finish at the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciencies, where the final metres cross a blue walkway over the water with grandstands on both sides.
What distinguishes Valencia from other flat courses is the field around you: the race attracts an unusually high concentration of runners chasing times, with deep, well-organised pace groups. Whatever your goal, there will be a group running exactly it - a luxury that makes even pacing far easier than running alone.
How to train for it
Train like the course: long, even, uninterrupted rhythm. Valencia asks no tactical questions - no hills to rehearse, no surface changes - so the specific preparation is time at goal pace until it feels automatic, plus the discipline to sit in a pace group and let it do the thinking.
The flat profile cuts both ways, as on every fast course: no terrain variation means no built-in recovery moments and unbroken load on the same muscles. Strength work for calves and hamstrings, and long runs that finish strong rather than merely finish, are what turn Valencia's speed from a promise into your result.
Weather and what to expect on the day
Early December on the Mediterranean coast is the closest thing marathon running has to reliable weather: cool mornings, mild days, low humidity, rain uncommon. It is a large part of why the race produces so many fast times - the conditions rarely take anything away.
The start is early and the sun low, so a discardable layer covers the wait. By the closing kilometres it is usually pleasantly mild rather than hot. Of all the races on this site, Valencia is the one where the day itself is least likely to be your excuse - which is exactly why people book it.
Which distance are you running?
Official site: www.aims-worldrunning.org/races/891.html
// SAMPLE BUILD
What a 12-week Marathon build looks like
A typical outline for Valencia Trinidad Alfonso Marathon. Your actual plan is built around your level, schedule and goal time - this shows the shape of the training.
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