Alisa Vainio Will Run the Berlin Marathon 15 Days After Winning the Finnish Title

Alisa Vainio won the Finnish marathon championship in Jyväskylä on Saturday in 2:27:47, seven minutes and 12 seconds clear of the field, in a race her coach had already written into the plan as that week’s long run.

Jarmo Viskari, who coaches her, told the Finnish athletics federation the day before that Vainio would use the championship to do the long session already scheduled for the end of that week. The course, four laps of the flat shoreline path along Jyväsjärvi, is flat in the way Berlin’s is, and Viskari said the Berlin route asks for nothing beyond an even pace and the control to hold it. She went through halfway in 1:14:36 and ran the second half in 1:13:11, holding 3:30 to 3:35/km for most of the morning before closing the final kilometers nearer 3:19. Anni Kuosmanen was second in 2:34:59 and Petra Kilpeläinen third in 2:43:05.

The European title came in Birmingham on Aug. 16, where she ran 2:22:26 for a championship record and won by 4:55, the largest margin the women’s race has produced at a European Championships, beating Rosa Mota’s 4:14 from 1986. Hungary’s Lili Anna Vindics-Tóth was second in 2:27:21 and Britain’s Abbie Donnelly third in 2:27:33. Thirteen days later Vainio won the 10,000m at the Finland and Sweden international at the Helsinki Olympic Stadium in 32:30.71, a personal best at 28.

Vainio Added Berlin to Get One Race Before Valencia

Earlier this month Vainio posted the rest of her year on Instagram, and Yle reported the two dates: the Berlin Marathon on Sept. 27 and the Valencia Marathon on Dec. 6. Chicago had been the other candidate. She has a place in Berlin’s elite group, which was not a given and which is what makes a fast time there realistic. Her competition manager, Jasper Buitink, confirmed it to Yle Urheilu.

“I wanted one race before Valencia,” she told the federation after Jyväskylä, in comments translated from Finnish. “Berlin was the best one in terms of the schedule. There is a long enough gap from there to Valencia, which is still the main target of my season.”

“I’ll run Berlin a bit on the remnants of my Birmingham European Championships fitness,” she told Yle. “There hasn’t been time for a proper recovery and training block. I still expect a good run there. I’m not going there to take it easy.”

Her marathon best is 2:20:39, run winning in Seville in February, and she was sixth in Paris in April in 2:21:35. Before either came the 2:20:48 for fourth in Valencia last December, which took the Nordic record off Ingrid Kristiansen, whose 2:21:06 had stood since 1985, and which was quicker than any Finnish man ran all year. Before this run of racing began, her best was 2:25:36, run in Berlin in 2024, which makes this month a return to the course where the old mark was set. Count Berlin and Valencia in and she will have run nine marathons inside 15 months.

Assefa Leads the Women’s Field in Berlin

Tigst Assefa returns to Berlin three years after running 2:11:53 there, a time that now sits third on the all-time list, and said in the organizers’ elite field announcement that she is “excited to once again try to break the world record.” Amane Beriso, who has run 2:14:58, is entered, along with Rosemary Wanjiru, who won in Berlin last year in 2:21:05. Bedatu Hirpa, whose 2:18:27 won the Dubai Marathon last year, was added later.

Valencia, on Dec. 6, is where the year ends, on the course where Vainio first ran under 2:21. Sub-2:20 has been the ambition since Seville, where she said afterward that she “would have had a good chance to run under 2:20, but that will be left for the future.”