We are excited to announce that Nuuksio Classic Trail Marathon was listed among the 25 most beautiful trail runs in the world by the Austrian endurance sports website HDSports. The listing includes some of the most renowned trail events in the world such as UTMB, Western States, and Zegama-Aizkorri, but also some hidden gems like Nuuksio Classic.
The featured events have a wide geographical coverage but Nuuksio Classic is the only one from the Northern Europe. For runners used to mountain trails in the Alps, Pyrenees and other common trail running destinations, the nature in Nuuksio National Park is something really special. Beautiful pine forest, tens of small lakes, and gray bare rock ground in parts of the course make it completely different from other events on the list.
The small, winging, natural trails along lakeshores, numerous technical ascents and descents of few tens of meters of vertical difference, and uneven ground with roots and rocks make the course more challenging than one would think based on the total climb included in the course. Many foreign runners say that they were surprised by how tough the course is – and how beautiful, as recognized also by HDSports.
For runners coming from abroad, Nuuksio Classic is an ideal trail event in Finland. The event center is only half an hour by car from the Helsinki airport as well as from Helsinki city center. The event center is a hotel in Nuuksio National Park, which enables a comfortable stay before and after the run. Direct flights from numerous destinations and ferries from Tallinn and Stockholm offer fluent travel to the event. We also organize a charter bus to the start of the marathon distance from Helsinki downtown to help runners without a car to arrive smoothly and to keep the carbon footprint of the event as low as possible.
As the travel of the participants is by far the biggest source of CO2 emissions in the event, we actually intentionally keep low profile towards the international audience. However, as HDSports is now spreading the word of our beautiful event, we recommend anyone considering participation to combine a possible travel to Finland with other reasons to come over: to avoid unnecessary flights, synchronize the run with a business trip or a holiday that you would do anyways.
