Can you run a marathon or trail race in Morocco (Marathon des Sables)?

The race everyone means is the Marathon des Sables, and it earns its mythology. Held each April in the southern Sahara, it is a self-supported, multi-stage ultramarathon covering roughly 250 kilometres over about six days, with a single brutal "long stage" that can exceed 80 kilometres in one push. You carry everything — food, sleeping gear, kit — on your back for the whole week; the organisers provide only water rations and a communal tent each night. It is regularly called one of the toughest foot races on earth, and having seen finishers stagger in, I do not argue.

It is not something you sign up for casually. Entries open well over a year ahead and the popular slots fill fast and are not cheap; you need a medical certificate, an ECG, and serious dedicated training. The real challenges are heat (daytime temperatures soar in the dunes), the soft sand that wrecks pacing and feet, foot care and blisters, and managing your own food and weight for a week. People train for a year, practise running with a loaded pack, and deliberately heat-acclimatise. Finishing is a genuine life achievement.

But Morocco running is not only the MdS. The Marrakech Marathon, run in late January, is a friendly, flat, affordable road marathon and half through the city and palm groves — a lovely way to combine a race with a holiday. In the mountains, trail and ultra events around the Toubkal massif and the High Atlas offer technical, high-altitude running with huge vertical, and a growing calendar of smaller desert ultras and stage races copies the MdS format at a gentler scale. There is something for most ambitions.

My honest advice: pick the event to your level. The Marrakech Marathon suits a fit recreational runner planning a trip around it; the mountain trail races demand altitude and technical experience; the Marathon des Sables demands a year of committed preparation, heat training and self-sufficiency practice. Whatever you choose, build in time to acclimatise, never underestimate the Saharan heat, and confirm current dates, entry deadlines and medical requirements directly with the organisers — they change yearly.