Itämeri Maraton (Baltic Sea Marathon), live.

Twice round the same line in Hanko

An autumn marathon in Hanko where the course is a line painted on the road, the marathon runs it twice, and the aid stations hand out gherkins.

Itämeri Maraton, the Baltic Sea Marathon, was run on Saturday 3 October 2026 from Keskuskoulu, the central school at Halmstadinkatu 2 in Hanko. Start, finish, event office, dressing rooms and showers are all in the same place. The marathon started at 12:00, the half marathon and the 10K, which the organiser calls the quarter marathon, an hour later at 13:00. The event is run by a working group chaired from Hangon palomiesyhdistys, the Hanko firefighters’ association, together with HIK’s athletics section.

The course is simple to describe and simple to follow on foot: one road loop, marked on the ground with a painted line and with kilometre signs along the way, and marshals holding traffic at the crossings. The half marathon runs the loop once, the marathon twice, and the 10K follows its own line that partly shares the blue one. The aid stations serve water, juice, an orange sports drink, raisins, bananas and gherkins. The marathon has a six-hour limit; the half and the 10K have five and a half hours.

A two-lap marathon is a good race to follow from a distance, because the second lap is where things change. A runner shares the link to their own Livebib broadcast, and family open it in a browser, no account or app needed. They see the position on the course line, the distance covered and a finish estimate that updates as the laps go by — anything estimated is marked as estimated. If the phone drops signal, the dot is carried forward along the loop instead of freezing, and it is clear when that happens.