Bestseller Aarhus City Half 2025

Earlier this month I participated in a half marathon in Aarhus, Denmark 🇩🇰: Bestseller Aarhus City Half (or BACH). I ran this a year ago - and that was a huuuge personal success because it was where I ran my lifetime Strava PBs for almost all distances up to the half 🤣. So naturally I had to run again this year 🤠👏🏻.

Now the big difference from 2024 was that I this time had run a mountain ultra only 1 week prior: mozart 100 by UTMB (~120K with 5K+ EG). So to be honest I wasn’t sure if I’d even run BACH 2025 - because I didn’t know if I’d be recovered enough to be able to. But you already know now that I did run it (because why would I otherwise bother with these race notes?😅). Yeah; I felt ok by Thursday/Friday (BACH was on Sunday. The ultra was the previous Saturday) … so I made the choice to do it.

BACH was - as was the case last year - super well organized; geared for 10.000+ runners. So obviously they had an effective race bib pickup. I grabbed my bib (and my race t-shirt 👏🏻) and met up with Mads and Nico plus his partner Iana. They were also running the half marathon (I believe their first BACH race). We all had different pace goals so we didn’t run together - but we met up before and after 🤗.

BACH also handed out a bag which we could then hand over to the race organizers prior to the run. Nice for us that was wearing a long sleeved shirt and also had some water in a bottle etc prior to the race. So I made use of this service (I picked up my bag again right after finishing the race).

Plan

Even though I wasn’t primed for this half I decided to do my best. I originally signed up for the fast starting group (finish times within 1:40…1:25). And I made this decision: follow the 1:29 pacers. If I felt strong I would run from them at the end. If not I would just hang around for as long as possible.

I had power to follow the 1:29 pacers for 12-13 kilometers. But by then I was getting close to “blow up” - so I dropped my pace slightly and tried to run strong (confidently and with somewhat proper form) in that new slower pace. For a long time I could see the pacers in front of me … but during the last 2 kilometers (ish) they disappeared. But I found other strong runners to run behind (that was easy; we were thousands of runners 🤠) - so I felt ok for the remaining of the race.

In other words I did not blow up: didn’t have to walk, jog or drop to a very slow pace. I felt good. Just not super powerful. I stayed in the 4:20s min/km throughout the remainder, so that’s ~10 seconds dropped per kilometer compared to the first half.

Enough about pace etc. Now to what really matters…

Route and conditions

The atmosphere was superb. The cheering crowd was almost unbroken from start to finish. Yelling “Go Nicky” etc - really giving the runners an extra kick everywhere.

The weather started mild (cloudy ⛅️) and then it became really hot at times during the run. I was told that more than one runner was observed at the route lying down. Without knowing it, I guess it had to do with the heat and maybe dehydration. However, there was plenty of aid stations with water 💧 … and I took a cup at 2-3 of these due to this heat. The crowd had also made some splash 💦 zones - and I went head on into every single one I saw. Felt great 😀.

The route was slightly busy at times due to road work in Aarhus. A few places made us run very close (I can only imagine how that was like further behind, with more runners). But it was IMHO tolerable and ok.

There were bands/choirs/loud music speaker🔊 everywhere. There’s much more than I can recall now. But what stood particularly out was: the Police 👮 band and the Brazilian Samba Dancers 💃🏻 🤩. Sorry for not being fast enough to take some photos of all this (I was too busy to follow 1:29 and at the same time see all this while not tripping around corners etc 😂).

Finish line

I got to the finish line after 1h30m37s. Together with an endless stream of fellow runners arriving just before and after. Very crowded. But I received my awesome medal.

Then grabbed a water bottle. And behold: an entire bag of goodies. It contained everything you could desire at this point: water, energy bar, protein drink, electrolyte drink, wine gums 🍬 and more. A bit blurry now, but I believe I also got my hands on fruit. And I missed this one: a non alcoholic beer 🍻 (but! I got one later, because Nico took care of that for me 👌🏻🤩 - thanks again Nico). I basically ingested almost everything 😂 as I made my way back to get my bag. I then crashed on the lawn very close to the finish line.

I followed the event web site for incoming finishers. Eagerly awaiting Mads, Nico and partner. Nico came in first. We hang out a bit (drank that delicious non alcoholic beverage). Then came Mads. And finally Iana (Nico’s partner). We chilled a bit there - it was really nice. Nothing beats hanging out in good company after a well completed race (for all) 🕺🏼👏🏻 .

Recommended?

Ha! Of course! This is my absolute favorite road half marathon. In fact I like it so much that I have already signed up for BACH 2026.

Everything is just wonderful.

• The wiggly route through Aarhus takes you through major touristy Aarhus parts: City centre streets, along the ARoS art museum, to the harbor, straight through the iconic Dokk1 building (culture center, parking house etc), and much more. I’m sorry I cannot recall it all (running at your limits tend to move focus away from sightseeing thoroughly 🙃🤣).
• The race organization is super pro. They are geared for the volume.
• The medal, the finisher bag, the race t-shirt … an abundance of “this is how it’s done”.
• The crowd support. Unbeaten - there to support you along all the 21 kilometers 🤗👌🏻

This race gets my top of the line 5-star rating. As far as Danish half marathons this is the best: ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️