VM Nghe An 2026: My Hien leads the women's race as Mai Trung edges Dan Quyet by 10 metres

At exactly 3:00, the floodlights dropped onto the start line in front of Ho Chi Minh Square. There was no grandstand large enough to hold spectators at that hour, only the sound of the 42km pack's first footsteps dissolving into Truong Thi street. At the front, three names split away almost from the first metre: Dan Quyet, Dao Ba Thanh and Nguyen Mai Trung.

Ten minutes later, the gap between first and second was roughly 10 metres. Mai Trung kept his face flat, eyes fixed ahead. Dan Quyet waved at the cameras, his breathing still even. The two took turns leading, and the way they swapped at close to 3 minutes 50 seconds per kilometre suggested both understood they would be running together for another three hours.

On the other side, the women's race unfolded far more quietly. My Hien, of Nghe An Runners, was leading. She had not been among the most-mentioned names before the gun. We always think we already know everything, until a strange name pushes the door open.

VnExpress Marathon Grand Tour Nghe An 2026 is the first edition held in the hometown of President Ho Chi Minh, with four distances: 5km, 10km, 21km and 42km. All four start from the Ho Chi Minh Square area and finish on Truong Thi street, at the junction with Le Van Huu. The longest distance left the line at 3:00, the 21km at 4:00, the 10km at 5:00 and the 5km at 6:00.

The course has a feature that is easy to overlook: it is almost perfectly flat and runs long on the Vinh - Cua Lo axis. From Ho Chi Minh Square, runners pass Ho Tung Mau, Truong Thi and Le Nin Boulevard before joining Vinh - Cua Lo Boulevard. After roughly 16km, the route turns onto Binh Minh, hugs the Cua Lo coastline and turns around at Cua Xa. Wide road, few corners, no climbs — the kind of terrain runners call a fast course, and also the kind that offers nowhere to hide a pacing mistake.

This year's start line featured Dan Quyet, Dao Ba Thanh and Le Van Huong in the men's field, alongside home clubs Nghe An Runner and Ha Tinh Runner in their bright pink shirts. Before the race, Thanh Meo and Vinh Runner noted this was the event with the fewest 42km runners, on a favourable, well-surfaced course — good conditions for placing and for personal bests.

Behind the scenes, organisers deployed hundreds of volunteers alongside traffic police and local medical staff. From the evening of September 26, volunteers gathered at the start area for briefings, then fanned out along the course to install infrastructure, complete aid stations and set up cheer zones. Bib collection ran at the Nghe An Labour Culture House across September 25 and 26.

Nguyen Mai Trung, 35, from Hanoi, works in e-commerce and runs with Thanh Cong Runners. He is known in the capital's running scene for a 2:41:55 at VnExpress Marathon Hai Phong 2026, 69th on the list of the fastest full marathon runners in Vietnamese history. That equals roughly 3:50 per kilometre, and it explains why, two kilometres into this morning, he was exactly where a runner with that background should be.

Ten metres at that pace equals about two seconds of running, one breath out of rhythm. Across the three and a half hours still to come, two seconds is something you can lose simply by fumbling a cup at an aid station. The more telling detail was body language: Dan Quyet waved at the cameras while Mai Trung never lifted his eyes from the road. Dan Quyet is running on feel; Mai Trung is running on the watch. Those first ten metres do not say who wins, but they say who trusts his own rhythm more.

My Hien entered with a personal best of 3:07:39, about 4:27 per kilometre, on the very roads she trains weekly with Nghe An Runners. In Vietnam's amateur marathon scene, 3:07 is a threshold most women take years to reach. Leading from the early kilometres is easy to understand for anyone who knows this course; the harder thing to understand is that she did it with almost nobody calling her name over the loudspeaker.

The coastal route sets a specific problem. The Vinh - Cua Lo stretch is long, straight and open, meaning runners take the wind head-on rather than being sheltered by buildings. The turn onto Binh Minh and the turnaround at Cua Xa are where the wind direction shifts relative to the start. Over 42km, the return leg after the turnaround is the decisive part: whoever holds rhythm through the change of wind holds position, and whoever burns matches in the first 20km will watch the gap open in silence.

The published timeline shows how organisers manage the field. The 21km has cutoffs at km 10 at 5:40 and km 16.9 at 6:50, with the course closing at 7:30. The 10km has one cutoff at km 6 at 6:15, closing at 7:00. The 5km has no cutoff and closes at 7:15. For the 42km, the published timeline lists no cutoff at all — the time pressure on the full marathon field is therefore internal rather than imposed by officials.

One story gets retold at every local race: home runners have an edge because they know the roads. Nineteen years of standing at start lines tells me the real edge is far smaller. Knowing the course does not make your legs stronger at km 35; it only tells you which stretch to hug the kerb to dodge wind, which aid station gets crowded, which corner kills your momentum. Those advantages are measured in seconds, not minutes.

Conversely, the claim that a thin 42km field makes a personal best easy is a trap. A thin field means no pack to sit in, nobody to pull the pace at km 25, nobody to read. Mai Trung and Dan Quyet will spend most of three and a half hours in direct confrontation, with no buffer but each other. A flat course makes it easier still to go out ten seconds per kilometre faster than planned, and the bill arrives exactly when nobody can save you.

Then there is the audience. The morning's feed poured into the duel between two men, while the women's race was compressed into a single line. Under the dust of an old season, there are races that never fell silent. I have made that mistake on air: giving minutes to the familiar name and letting the strange one drift past. My most valuable mistake was believing I had to be flawless in front of the camera. What viewers actually need from a presenter is attention in the right place, not a polished voice.

What is worth watching in Nghe An is not who crosses first at 5:40. It is that a race arriving in a province for the first time, with a flat course and a thin 42km field, is producing exactly the kind of pressure the big-city events no longer can: the pressure of having nobody ahead of you to shelter behind. If My Hien holds her position to the finish on Truong Thi, this year's story will have been written by the person least mentioned before the gun.