Buenos Aires 25km: how not to run

On the 15th of July 2025, I achieved something that one year ago would have been madness to me, I ran a 25 kilometer (15 mile) race around my favourite city in the world. 

It was my plan to take on the shorter, 21km version last august, however my excuses were: a lack of training, improper footwear, and illness. Therefore, I never even made it to the start line.

This time I got tired of the excuses. 

Flashback to six weeks before the race day and I was as physically fit as I’ve been in years, consistently road and trail running as well as eating healthily for the most part. I was running further than I had ever done before. 

Then after months of consistent training, I came to Argentina. Since then, I’ve been tackling living alone for the first time in my life and in turn taken a big step back from running.  

When I first arrived I thought, ‘mhm yeah, I need to make the most of all my favourite Argentine foods whilst i’m here’, and with that, had been stuffing my face with steak, empanadas, milanesa, ice cream, medialunas, and alfajores—all of which aren’t exactly healthy options. 

But as the weeks passed I had been somewhat taunted by various billboards plastered around the city reading ‘New Balance Buenos Aires 25km June 15’, a race I would’ve loved to be a part of if it were two months earlier and I was actually fit. 

It was a wake up call to get back to running. 

Seeing those billboards follow me around the city, and thinking about the year I’ve had since I missed the half marathon and all the excuses I made not to run then, one week before this race I put all those excuses aside and signed up. 

Potentially a very stupid decision. 

With one week to ‘train’ for what would be the longest distance I’d ever ran in my life, I decided to do a 10km and a 5km, both runs hurt my legs and my ego. I wasn’t even remotely fit. 

On the friday before the race I made my way to the New Balance store in Martínez to pick up my kit— which I thought would just be my runners number and maybe an energy gel at a push. However, I was pleasantly surprised to receive various treats such as a protein bar, a bottle of water, some gummies, some yerba, and even sun cream (more on that later). 

With the kit in my possession and physical check-up completed, I was as ready as I was going to be for this. So I thought I’ll make the most of the Saturday before the race because I knew that in 24 hours I’d be in a world of pain. 

I went to San Telmo to see my friend before his trip to Europe, and what better than an afternoon in the market to buy some football tops, and a ‘quick’ stop at a nice German bar we’ve frequented whilst I’ve been here.

The second activity probably wasn’t going to help my chances in the race but I thought: ‘wellll, I’ll have one or two, it’s still early and I can get to bed by 10pm.’

I’ve never been so wrong in my life. 

Two litres of German beer, 3 large glasses of wine, and two Arepas later it was 2AM and I had just arrived back to my apartment, very unexcited for my alarm to sound three and a half hours later. 

Apart from the lack of sleep and the non-existent training, I added yet another thing not to do in preparation for a race: awful nutrition. For my breakfast I ate dulce de leche on toast with a mate—just a horrible way to treat your body before a run. 

Somehow—and of this I’m really not sure—I had arrived at the start location in Parque 3 de Febrero at 6.30AM. Hungover, hardly any sleep, and looking at all the other runners with the massive dread that they all seemed very professional. A worrying thought entered my mind: ‘what if I actually come last here? What an idiot I am.’ 

As everyone gathered at the start line I shifted my way towards the back of the pack in hope that I wouldn’t get washed away with a big crowd of highly trained athletes. A tactic that worked surprisingly well. 

The huge wave of runners set off north and I felt inexplicably good as I jogged along in the dark. Just four km in we passed by the monumental River Plate stadium as the sun came up, and then turned onto Avenida Libertador. 

It was a weirdly nice feeling as I ran past various places I have memories attached to, I thought to myself that I would’ve never imagined the situation I found myself in back then. 

We passed into Zona Norte and ticked over the 10km mark right next to a beautiful coastline view of Rio de la Plata, at this point I was going steady and actually enjoying the run. 

Two kilometres later the sense of dread started to set in, I knew I would hit the wall at some point, but I just wasn’t sure when my body was going to start giving up on me. As we ran back into city lines, I got my answer. 

Kilometre 15 and onwards was where all the bad decisions I made leading up the race caught up with me. No matter how many gummies I ate, I couldn’t regain any sort of energy. I was crashing, quickly. 

There’s no complex way to put it, the last ten kilometres sucked. They really, really sucked. My legs started getting heavier and heavier with every grueling step towards the finish line until it felt as if I was running in tar.  I could hear the distant, muffled, shouting of the announcer as much better runners than I finished their race. 

Although I knew I was on the home straight, there was no comfort to be found. 

Crawling past the big 20km sign made me realise that I was actually going to do this, something I had dreamed about for a long time was slowly, horribly becoming a beautiful reality.

There was no way I wasn’t going to complete the race now.

At kilometre 22 I reached into my backpack and blindly grabbed the first plastic tube resembling an energy gel I could find—this has to be up there with the worst mistakes I’ve made in my life. I unsuspectingly squeezed the tube fully into my mouth, getting greeted by a truly disgusting taste. I knew energy gels don’t usually taste nice but this was really bad. 

Before I even tried to swallow whatever was in my mouth I quickly checked the tube which read ‘sun cream’—I think it was there where I hit rock bottom.

Spitting the offputting white cream out of my mouth, I continued forward with a horrible lingering taste for the last three kilometres. At this point I just wanted to cross the line. 

What followed was a run and walk technique which put me in the dilemma of: ‘If I keep running I’ll finish quicker, but if I keep trying to run I might seriously injure myself’, I found myself in a horrible limbo which I was only shaken out of with half a kilometre to go. 

A man passed me, looked me in the eyes, and in Spanish said something that roughly translates to “you can do it, dummy!”, wise words that gave me the ability to dig even deeper and cross the finish line running. 

I didn’t exactly feel proud of what I had done as I collected my medal, I was just more relieved that it was finally over, and honestly I was trying not to crash completely. 

But looking back on it now and writing about it, I think it’s a fairly good story, which is ultimately what I wanted, so I’m happy about that.