The story
It started with a marathon in Barcelona
One race, four separate bookings, and the quiet thought that all of it belonged on one page.
I'm Wessel Willemsen. This is why the site exists, what it became, and how it is paid for.
Each dot is a destination marathon. Map: Natural Earth
A while ago I signed up for a marathon in Barcelona. Entering the race was one website. The flight was another. The hotel a third. Then the small things: how to get in from the airport, which day to arrive, when bib pickup closed. All of it sat in a different tab, a different inbox, a different booking reference.
Honestly, it was not hard. What clicked was not the difficulty, it was the scatter. There was no single place where the trip existed as a whole thing, nowhere to open a week later and see it at a glance.
How nice would it be to have one place where the whole marathon trip lives, and you can just come back to it?
Barcelona was not meant to be the only one, and starting from scratch each time was reason enough to build something. The films came from the same impatience: looking for footage of a course before a race, I found there are options, but most of them feel a decade old.
What it became
One place for the trip, and a film of the course
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The trip
Put the race in and the trip page opens already written, in pencil, as one sentence about your trip. Tap a word to correct it. Nothing gets booked here, and no account is needed to start.
Plan my trip -
The films
The whole course from the air, start to finish, with what is worth knowing about it: where it climbs, where it turns, where it gets hard.
Watch the films -
The course in 3D
10 race pages carry the course as a 3D model you can play from start to finish, drag along, and time at your own pace.
How a film is made
Most of the films are flown over imagery from Google Earth, with my own course line, captions and map drawn on top, and in the newer ones a narration. Link to them or embed the YouTube player wherever it helps a runner, but please do not download them and upload them again somewhere else.
A film answers the questions a flyover set to music leaves open: where the race is won, where it breaks people, and why. Every claim is tied to a kilometre of the course, and every layer under a frame has a licence you can go and read.
Free to use
How it is paid for
A fair question to ask of any site that does not charge you. The short version, in plain terms.
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Nothing to pay
Planning a trip, saving races and sharing a plan are free, and there is no paid tier waiting behind them.
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Links that pay a fee
For now it is paid for by me, and by a small referral fee when you book a hotel or buy race fuel through a link here. The hotel links go through Stay22, a company that sends you on to a booking site with hotels near the race and pays this site a fee if you book there. The flight links are a plain flight search and pay nothing. The gel and a few race-morning things on a race page, and the kit on the Running gear page, link to Amazon, which pays this site a fee if you buy them there; they are picked for the runner, not for the fee. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
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Advertising
The plan is for advertising to pay for most of it: ads with the films on YouTube, and ads on this site that I sell directly, for example to a hotel or a restaurant near a course. An ad on this site is always marked Sponsored, and it never sits inside a film.
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The same price, nothing ranked
The price you pay is the same either way, and nothing on this site is ranked by what it pays. This is not a travel agency picking the best trip for you: that part stays yours to work out.
What it never takes
The films are not for sale
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No organiser pays for a film
Every film is free, on my own YouTube channel, in my own edit. No race organiser pays for one or commissions one, and nothing inside a film is paid for: no sponsor, no logo, no shop.
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Organisers as partners
An organiser can help, with race facts and their favourite spots on the course, and is welcome to share, link or embed the film. They are partners, never clients: the film stays free, and the edit stays mine.
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Your plans stay yours
What you put in a plan is yours. It is not sold, and it is not shared with race organisers. The details are on the privacy page.
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Nothing official
No film or page here is official, endorsed by or affiliated with any race. A race name belongs to the organisation that runs it, and is used only to say which race a film or a page is about.
Support
A gift, if you like
Made by one person
I'm Wessel Willemsen, a developer who runs marathons, and I make the films and the site. If something is wrong or missing, write to contact@marathontrip.com and it gets fixed.