Debbie and Jason like their holidays. But they also like to earn their relaxing days by the pool with some hard racing…

From the website, the Las Galletas Half Marathon didn’t look like a big deal. There might be a few handy locals there but TV cameras, hundreds of elite-looking runners, grandstands, police roadblocks and 15-foot start/finish gantries? Nahhh….

Yes. All of those things were there. Lining up near the front (force of habit) of the several-hundred runners on a glorious Canarian morning, we knew this event carried much more prestige than we thought.

Two laps of a course that was far from flat (we estimated that two-thirds of it was uphill), the water stations at two-kilometre intervals were just the ticket for a pair of pale-skinned folk from the north of England who are more accustomed to running in temperatures thirty degrees lower than this.

Almost limping over the finish line after “getting a bit carried away at the end”, Jason crossed the line in 1:36 – Debbie finished her run in a shade over two hours, “I found the 70% uphill really hard and my legs didn’t work properly on the second loop. Glad to have finished without passing out :-)” she said later on that day, in between gulps of well-earned gin and tonic.

The Las Galletas Half Marathon is held in the beautiful coastal town of (surprise surprise) Las Galletas, only a 20 minute taxi ride from Tenerife’s south airport. It’s been running for over 19 years and it’s a brilliantly-organised (and quite big) race to test the legs in lovely weather after a long and dark UK winter. Do it.