A Scottish Trail Runner Ran a Marathon Every Day of His Mediterranean Cruise

Most people who book a week on a Mediterranean cruise have a sun lounger, a few shore excursions and a long dinner in mind. Paul Manson, a trail runner from Milngavie, just north of Glasgow, spent his running a marathon every day, six of them through the ports the ship called at and one on the ship itself.

Manson, who posts his challenges online as The Random Runner, ran the seven marathons in August on Princess Cruises’ Enchanted Princess, starting in Rome on Aug. 4 before he had even boarded. His watch had the week at 299.5 km (about 186 miles), which left him half a kilometer shy of a round 300, something he admitted bothered him a little.

When he first took the idea to the cruise line, Manson told ABC News in an interview that aired on Oct. 12, no one could promise it would work, including him. “And they were like, ‘Is that even possible?’ And I was like, ‘I don’t know,'” he said.

Early Starts and Long Days

Manson told People he was up at around 6 a.m. on port days so he could be off the ship by about 7, ahead of the worst of the heat, and that each marathon took him five and a half to six hours. At home he runs the distance in about 3:30, well inside the average marathon finishing time.

Rome was the slowest of the lot, at up to seven hours, because of the city’s steps and how often he stopped to film on a route that passed the Colosseum. ABC reported temperatures of 100 F when he ran in Naples. In Kotor, Montenegro, he climbed 1,350 meters (about 4,430 feet) to a viewpoint in what he told The Independent was 40 C heat, then had to make sure he was back in time for the last tender out to the ship. Corfu came next, and from Katakolon, on Greece’s west coast, he ran inland to finish at Olympia, home of the ancient Olympic Games.

Seven marathons in seven days is the same load the World Marathon Challenge asks of its runners across seven continents. Manson’s version came with a cabin waiting at the end of each day, and he told People one of his favorite things to do once he was back on board “was to grab a cocktail.”

185 Laps of the Top Deck

On the one day without a port, Manson stayed on board and ran 185 laps of the Enchanted Princess’s top-deck running track to reach 42.2 km, the full marathon distance, and kept count with a hand clicker. That works out to roughly 228 meters a lap.

In 2011 the same cruise line hosted what it called the first marathon at sea, when Steve Eaton, then 57, ran 70 laps of the Grand Princess’s Promenade Deck off the coast of Portugal in 5:16:45 to raise money for the military charity Help for Heroes, according to Cruise Industry News. Crystal Cruises claimed the same first five years later when it announced a 96-lap marathon by Dane Rauschenberg on the Crystal Serenity. Manson’s track was short enough that he needed more than two and a half times as many laps as Eaton.

A Finish on Mount Etna

The last marathon came on the ship’s stop at Messina, in Sicily, and part of the route took him down the slopes of Mount Etna. The volcano was erupting, which Manson said he had not known beforehand, and he finished covered in sweat and black ash before cleaning off with a swim in the sea.

By Aug. 13 Etna had been sending up lava fountains and flows without a break for seven days, and Salvo Gambino, director of the Etna Observatory at Italy’s National Institute of Geophysics and Volcanology, told Euronews that “similar phenomena were seen in the late 1970s.” Ash from the plume closed Catania airport, Sicily’s busiest, for five straight days, according to the Associated Press.

Manson’s usual ground is trail running, from ultras to long solo runs across Scotland, but he told People the cruise worked as a base. “It is a great way of exploring different areas and knowing you have a comfortable ship to return to each day,” he said. He is now putting together a longer film of the week for his YouTube channel, with shorter videos on the planning, hydration and routes for each stage to follow.