Number 1 - Flora London Marathon 22/04/07

I am starting my Challenge 40 with the Flora London Marathon race this year.

I quite enjoyed the race, I was not affected that much by the heat, I think due to running in Australia, I did however get slowed down by the start and continually having to run around other runners.

I do appreciate that the London Marathon is a sociable marathon, rather than a runners marathon, however I do feel the organisers could do more to ensure that those who do wish to run the marathon and achieve a target time are given an opportunity to do so, considering it is such a flat fast course.

This could be achieved by more staggering of the start times and also anyone who peels of their pen number are automatically sent to the last pen. Remember I really do not think the stickers, which are stuck on the number, can come off with out outside intervention. Also maybe it is possible to do more to ensure predicted times of people in the fast pens are based on either marathon times or calculated from half-marathon times. I can't believe anyone thinking they can run a 3:30 marathon has never completed at least a half marathon.

Anyway I could go on, but on the whole I enjoyed the race, would I do it again.... Only if they could improve the start or if I was doing it for fun and not to achieve a good time.

Am I the only runner out there that gets frustrated with the FLM...

Rating : 7/10