The first of its kind, RunSociety’s World Cities Online Challenge: Road To Marathon, is a series of 12 virtual running events which bring runners to 12 beautiful cities around the world including Bangkok and Tokyo in Asia, Gold Coast in Australia, New York, Boston and Chicago in the United States and Paris and London in Europe.

For each of the virtual events, runners would complete the full marathon distance of 42.195km, either done as a single run or in multiple running sessions. In this regard, the World Cities Online Challenge is RunSociety’s subtle nod towards the biggest and best marathons in the world.

During this challenging Covid-19 period, attempting such challenges are probably the best way to bring us around the world to run. Unfortunately it may not feel anywhere near the same as running on the streets and experiencing the culture of our desired city, though.

Also, do note that with athletes being allowed to complete the 42.195km in multiple sessions spaced throughout a month or even the year, the World Cities Online Challenge virtual series does not really have any claim to call themselves a marathon running series.

In order to qualify as a marathon, it is mandatory for the 42.195km distance to be completed in a single run or walk session.

I participated in the World Cities Online Challenge: Road To Marathon, taking part in the Boston, Paris and the Tokyo events.

Besides the attractive-looking finisher t-shirt and medal that I had wanted to have in my collection, my reasons for choosing these events is that the Boston, Paris and Tokyo Marathons are all beautiful, big-city marathons that I have aspirations to run in someday, once the Covid-19 pandemic is well and truly over.

In line with the annual race date of the actual Boston Marathon in April every year, the Boston Online Challenge was completed earlier, in April this year, in about 4 sessions of varying distances, around my neighbourhood and East Coast Park, due to the implementation of the circuit breaker period at the time.

Being a virtual run, we could complete the run anytime we wanted, and at any location of our choice, eliminating the need to gather in groups.

My finisher medal and t-shirt arrived less than a week after my completion. Kudos to the RunSociety team for being so prompt with the shipping of the finisher entitlements.

The Paris and Tokyo events were completed early this month, one straight after the other. The Paris one was finished in about 4 sessions of varying distances in the first week of September, and the Tokyo one was done during the second week in 2 sessions of 21.1km each.

The types of sessions varied; while the Tokyo ones were both easy long runs, the Paris runs were a mixture of easy runs as well as speed and interval sessions completed together with my running club.

By this stage though, the Covid-19 restrictions had loosened slightly and groups of up to five pax were permitted in Singapore.

And once again, less than a week after I had completed both events, the Paris and Tokyo finisher t-shirts and medals arrived, both at the same time, in two separate packages. 

This, once again, is very prompt and punctual of RunSociety, and such service is what I always look out for and appreciate, not only when I do virtual races, but also for online shopping in general.