Western Caribbean Challenge: Five Marathons, Five Countries, One Week
The second I saw this marathon package I knew it was perfect for me. Right now I am young (and a little reckless) so I can take off large swaths of time to travel the world and run in races. It’s been extremely rewarding and certainly will be a chapter of my life I will never forget. If I run two international marathons each year it will take 25 years to complete my challenge. I’m OK with that timeline but understand that life happens and plans change.
Z Adventures’ Western Caribbean Challenge knocks out 10% of my races in the first week of December.
- South Beach Marathon (on my list of fun marathons)
- Cozumel Pirate Marathon (Cancun and temple ruins)
- Belize Tropical Marathon (blue hole dive site is bucket list material)
- Mohogany Bay Marathon (Honduras)
- Seven Mile Beach Marathon (Grand Cayman)
Spending a winter week in the Caribbean sounds like a great idea to me. To top it off, transport to the different races is done via cruise ship. That adds a second twist that I think will send people either way. Personally, I think going by boat would be preferable to flying. One major drawback to this package is that you end up spending very little time at each location and strenuous activities (ex: diving blue hole) would be out of the question.
There is also a 5 day challenge in the Southern Caribbean in early February and Scandinavia in July. The company is also putting together a Mediterranean package and Balkan package which I would be very interested in seeing. You can read more about each of the packages at their website:
http://www.z-adventures.org/events.html