Springtime in Moscow is good news for athletes: the running season is off to its annual post-winter start.
On May 20 Moscow will host a half-marathon (21.1
kilometers), one of a series of races that gradually help runners train for the
full marathon in September.
Dmitry
Tarasov, director of the Moscow Marathon, told The Moscow Times that when he
took over the organization of the race in 2013, he had two main problems. One
was that only a few runners took part — around 300 marathoners and one or two
thousand runners at shorter races. The
second problem was that most of the runners were over 40 years old. “They had
been born and raised in the Soviet Union, gone to children’s and sports camps,
ran in sports clubs, and usually had parents who were sports
enthusiasts.” His task was to bring young people to the sport. So he
looked around at the experience in other countries, and adapted some ideas to
Russia.
