You may now, that I actually set up the plan for the Nice Half Marathon in France on April 16th (Eastern). Together with my Mum, we would have give it another chance. However, as you could not register until mid-January (with a website containing info from last year, and no latest info), we needed to look for alternatives. I  thought about the assassination of last year with the truck. It was at the same place (Place de Massena) as the start and Finish of the Half-Marathon has been. So maybe, I thought, the canceled it. Stupidly, the organizer shared no information, I even wrote an E-Mail. No answer until today.

And there I found it! The 4th Istrian Marathon in Slovenia, which provides distances from marathon and half of it, as well as a Recreational Run. It starts and finishes in Koper, a small town on the coast side of Slovenia. As Slovenia has only a tiny strip of land with access to the sea, it is also the only harbor town in the whole country. It neighbors on Trieste/Italy in the north and more abroad in the south is Croatia. With 25'000 inhabitants (according to Wikipedia), Koper is also very small compared to Nice and with about 4000 runners the race should be middle-sized. Compared to Nice the Half-Marathon course has a lot of similarities:

1) It is mainly on the coast of the Mediterranean Sea

2) It is flat (about 50m elevation)

3) It is a Road Race

4) It happens in beginning of April

The Marathon course is way more hilly (Actually, you cannot compare last year with this year because they changed the route).  In contrast to the Organizers from Nice Marathon the web page contains a lot of information, for instance, the video about the route:

Another big plus is their kind service. After sending them a mail to get information about the traveling in Slovenia and accommodation in Koper, they wrote me back within hours. We already booked the one-hour flight from Zurich to Ljubljana. There we will book a Transfer to the Hotel in Koper with goopti.com. On Saturday we will visit the town and pick up the bib number. On Sunday we will run our big race! Finally the Istrian Marathon has its own anthem. A song you need to hear:

When I visited the webpage this Friday I saw that the Nice Half Maraton is confirmed,. There will be some changes in date, place and name, due to the assassination (registrations are still not possible). I can understand this, but way too late for us. People from foreign countries need planning certainty for vacation, journey, hotel and so on..!!

So see you this year in Koper!