Given the fact that Nottingham is overzealous with it’s road
closures for the Marathon/Half Marathon and the tram isn’t very convenient for
the Embankment, I employ Shank's Pony to get to the start line. In truth, the walk probably
served as a pretty good warm up.
The course is more or less the same as last year's with one
dead turn thankfully taken out. So just one more to remove please but this is
certainly one of the better courses they’ve had.
Just ahead of seven miles I get chance for a sweaty snog
with one of the crowd, which was my partner of course but then everyone else backed away
in terror when they saw me coming.
I have a good run and finish in 1:44:50 and pass Richard
Whitehead en route, in the end beating him by a couple of minutes.
It's
again an excellent event and with a t-shirt for all finishers this year
for the first time. It's a cotton one too, which I prefer. I have so
many technical ones already.
My only real grip is that Nottingham still persist with the notorious water pouches. Oddly
some people do seem to like them but I assume these are the folk who possess the
black magic required to get something substantial out of them. Personally I probably consumed
only half the amount of water I wanted to and I really don't see how
they get these things through their H&S Risk Assessment. I run races up and down
the country and have never come across these dreadful things anywhere else.
These are a blot on what is otherwise, fantastic race.
Although I still maintain that they should be taking this race into the city
centre like the big cites do - Sheffield, Leeds, Birmingham, Manchester etc
etc. Which perversely would contain the race more central and therefore probably even reduce the number of road closures.
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