Holiday Insurance including cover for parkruns and half marathons abroad

mirhab

First timer. I and some friends are off to Sweden this year to run Gothenburg half marathon, and as it’s a Saturday, we’re going to walk run the local parkrun too.. but we can’t find out if travel insurance will cover these activities! Most either explicitly include, or exclude, marathons.  Some mention running, but don’t mention competitions, half’s, 5kms.. 

I should point out, we’re going “for fun” and don’t expect to be in the first 2/3rds of the race even! 

An added complication, I also will be travelling to Canada this year so want annual cover for both trips - I only plan to run a parkrun and do
some training runs in Canada.. not one of those Hypothermic Half’s!  

How do we choose the right insurance and  get a good price?! Every penny counts right now. 

Thankyou in advance. 

user1977

I haven’t seen one which excludes marathons or other road running - do you have an example? It hardly seems an extreme sport.

If a policy doesn’t exclude it then you’re covered anyway, they don’t have to include an infinite list of all the activities you’re allowed to do.

Mark_d

I've just checked and my current AllClear Platinum policy excludes running, where part of a competition.

I used to play football internationally - in organised but amateur tournaments.  I found that a lot of policies wouldn't cover me but InsureAndGo did.  It's not clear to me whether InsureAndGo would cover you for your running so I'd recommend calling them.

user1977

Mark_d said:

I've just checked and my current AllClear Platinum policy excludes running, where part of a competition.

Hmm. If you're not expecting to come any higher than, say, 4000th in a marathon, are you still taking part in a "competition"?! Arguably you could still come first...

I would say Park Runs are fine though as they specifically say they are merely organising timed runs, not a competition.

Aretnap

user1977 said:

Mark_d said:

I've just checked and my current AllClear Platinum policy excludes running, where part of a competition.

Hmm. If you're not expecting to come any higher than, say, 4000th in a marathon, are you still taking part in a "competition"?! Arguably you could still come first...

Large marathons tend to have separate categories and start times for elite runners and punters, making it essentially impossible for someone in the "punter" category to win, even if they could run as fast as an Olympic champion. I'd suggest that unless you're in the elite category, running in a mass start event like the London Marathon is no more of a "competitive" event than your local fun run or Parkrun is.

If travel insurers routinely turned down claims on the ground that running in marathon was competitive sport then I suspect that there would be Ombudsman cases on the subject, and I couldn't find any. I was mildly amused however to find this one where, among other things, the Ombudsman had to decide whether running a marathon was something that would ever be done for "pleasure".

https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/decision/DRN-4308400.pdf