Mai Trung and Dan Quyet Trade the Lead Meter by Meter in the 42km, My Hien Leads the Women's Race at VM Nghe An 2026

3:00 a.m., September 27, 2026. Ho Chi Minh Square, Vinh City. The starting horn sounded, and within seconds the 42km race of the VnExpress Marathon Grand Tour Nghe An split into two worlds: a group of three breaking clear at the front, and the rest of the field still shuffling into place behind the line. Ten minutes later, the gap between Nguyen Mai Trung and Dan Quyet was roughly 10 metres. They traded the lead. Mai Trung kept his head down, eyes fixed on asphalt still wet with dew. Dan Quyet waved at the cameras, smiling, his stride loose, as though he were out for a morning jog in a park rather than three kilometres into a marathon. In the women's race, the leader was My Hien. She was running the very roads she trains on every day, in the colours of Nghe An Runners, with a personal best of 3 hours 07 minutes 39 seconds. Those two stories unfolded at the same time, from the same start line, and will receive very different amounts of attention. This was the first time the VnExpress Marathon Grand Tour had come to the birthplace of President Ho Chi Minh. The event featured four distances: 5km, 10km, 21km and 42km. Bib collection took place at the Nghe An Labour Culture House across September 25-26, and from the evening of September 26 hundreds of volunteers gathered at the start area for their assignments. Local police, traffic police and medical staff were mobilised for security, traffic control and medical support along the course. After a briefing session, these teams dispersed to their points on the route, installing infrastructure, finishing water stations and cheer zones. The 42km course leaves Ho Chi Minh Square, passes Ho Tung Mau, Truong Thi and Le Nin Avenue before joining the Vinh - Cua Lo Avenue. After roughly 16km it turns onto Binh Minh, runs along the coast at Cua Lo, turns around at Cua Xa and returns to finish on Truong Thi Street where it meets Le Van Huu. The other distances started later: 21km at 4:00, 10km at 5:00, 5km at 6:00. Organisers set cut-off points for the 21km at km10 at 5:40 and km16.9 at 6:50, closing the course at 7:30; the 10km had one cut-off at km6 at 6:15 with the course closing at 7:00; the 5km had no cut-off and closed at 7:15. What stood out was the density. Veteran runners present before the start, including Thanh Meo and Vinh Runner, described it as one of the smallest 42km fields they had ever raced in, with the Nghe An course being fairly favourable and the road surface good. For a marathon, a thin 42km field is ideal ground for placing well and setting a personal best. But it also says something else about the structure of Vietnam's running movement: the longest distance remains the one fewest people dare touch, even as the sport has grown popular enough to sell out tens of thousands of bibs across the shorter distances. Against that backdrop, the duel between Mai Trung and Dan Quyet means more than a race for position. Mai Trung is 35, from Hanoi, works in e-commerce and is a member of Thanh Cong Runners. He drew attention in the capital's running scene with 2:41:55 at the VnExpress Marathon Hai Phong 2026, ranking 69th on the list of the fastest full marathon runners in Vietnamese history. That 2:41:55 translates to a pace of about 3 minutes 50 seconds per kilometre, sustained for more than 42km. It is a pace most amateur runners touch only in the first kilometre or two of a long run, before the body forces them to slow. At the tenth minute in Nghe An, with about 10 metres between the two leaders, the group had covered roughly 2.6km. That tells us nothing about who wins, but it shows both men chose to start with control rather than an early surge. The way Mai Trung ran tells its own story. Head down, eyes lowered to the road, shoulders slightly hunched forward. For a runner with a 2:41:55 background, that is the posture of someone counting his own breathing, checking the feel in his feet, calculating whether his legs are answering the way they did in training. Dan Quyet waving at cameras at the third kilometre, by contrast, suggests he is psychologically comfortable, not yet feeling pressure to open a gap. In marathon running, early ease is a double-edged blade: it saves nervous energy, but it also makes it easy to ignore the body's warning signals over the first 10km. Behind them, Dao Ba Thanh and Le Van Huong were among the other names worth watching. That Dao Ba Thanh broke clear in the opening strides alongside Dan Quyet and Mai Trung shows the leading pace this year is far from slow. On a course with a fairly open, flat stretch along Cua Lo, that pace should hold reasonably steady until the field turns at Cua Xa and faces the long haul home. In the women's race, My Hien led as the home runner. She competes for Nghe An Runners and holds a personal best of 3:07:39. That equates to roughly 4 minutes 27 seconds per kilometre over more than 42km. In a Vietnamese marathon where the number of women racing the longest distance remains thin, a home runner at 3:07 pace leading on roads she knows is a story that deserves telling alongside the men's race, if not ahead of it. On her feet, I see a whole generation that has never been named. I have followed more than a few marathons in East Africa, where women runners are recognised by an entire nation, and I have always wondered why elsewhere the women's leader is often mentioned only as a footnote. In Nghe An this year, the 10-metre gap between two male runners is what the cameras follow. My Hien — leading the most punishing of the event's four distances, on home ground — needs more than a single line of note before people remember she is in first place. The value of a runner does not lie in a personal best, but in what happens to that number over the years. One counter-intuitive point deserves to be stated plainly: a small 42km field is not a sign of a weak event, nor evidence that the running movement is declining. It is a consequence of the boom at the shorter distances. When a race sells out its 5km and 10km bibs within hours, most entrants come for an experience, a medal, a run with friends. The number willing to spend four hours in the dark on a road is always a fraction of that, and that is a structural feature of marathon running, not an organiser's failure. The knock-on effect is what matters. A thin 42km field creates two opposing pressures. Competitively, it makes for a cleaner race: fewer collisions, less congestion at water stations, a genuine duel for the front runners. In terms of meaning, it makes placings easier to achieve and therefore cheaper in the eyes of outside observers. A strong result on a flat course, on a cool morning, against a shallow field, always has to be read with its context rather than standing alone. The same holds for the personal-best frenzy. As marathons multiply across the country and a new PR is posted every weekend, runners increasingly measure their worth by a number on a watch. But a race does not exist to serve that number. A race exists to put a person among other people, at the same time, on the same road, and to force one question a watch never asks: with a rival right behind you, can you still run like that? On the Nghe An course on the morning of September 27, that question is being answered metre by metre by Mai Trung and Dan Quyet. At the third kilometre, with Mai Trung's head down and Dan Quyet smiling, neither yet knows which of them will hold the rhythm to the coastal km16, through the turnaround at Cua Xa, and onto Truong Thi Street with enough left in the legs to sprint. I write about women's sport to peel back the invisible curtain that men's sport draws over the women running the same course, the same distance, to the same finish line. My Hien leading in Nghe An needs no aura to be the leader. She needs exactly one thing: to be called by her rightful position. What is worth waiting for after this morning is not who crosses the line first. It is whether a race with a 10-metre gap in the men's field and a home runner leading the women's field will be told with equal weight. Vietnamese marathon running has learned how to stage a race. The next step is learning to see everyone running in it.