By Mark.
A well organised race with great marshalling of the starting waves, and it was a bit like playing hide and seek trying to locate the bag drop initially! We managed to find it eventually, tucked away round the corner of the Old Trafford cricket ground. With the waves setting off across a 2 hour spread, it left Anna who was starting in one of the later waves some time to kill before she needed to be on the start line after I had set off. What Anna wasn’t expecting was for the route from the car park to the start line to be intersected by the race route and had to wait for a break in runners before darting across the road! Support along the route was fantastic with thousands lining the road, shouting, cheering and being generally supportive. With friendly marshalled and well managed water and gel stations it certainly added to the atmosphere. Conditions were initially perfect, a cool dry morning, a slight breeze, however, whoever ordered the downpouring of rain at about half distance clearly wasn’t thinking about those runners who wear glasses when racing. Despite being advertised as one of the UK’s flattest marathon routes, there were still a few little rises that sneaked up you especially through Altrincham!
The only real black mark against the event was some of the post race goodies ran out before all of the runners got back. I ended up with 2 x bottles of water, 2 x cans of non-alcoholic Erdinger, 2 x protein bars & 2 x bananas plus the obligatory medal and t-shirt a very much could have done with a carrier bag! Anna on the other hand found her load slightly easier to manage with just 1 bottle of water and a can of non-alcoholic Erdinger! Karma perhaps took over a little as the protein bars were absolutely disgusting and evacuated your mouth of all moisture within 5 seconds. The stairs on the way back to the car park certainly weren’t what the doctor ordered either but made for an interesting end to a great race experience! I’m still slightly bitter at having to register for an account with Manchester United, being a Liverpool fan that was definitely an interesting moment but made the race day parking so much easier.