Greater Manchester Marathon 19th April 2015

[Jack Hughes]

Where: Manchester, starts and finishes and uses some of the facilities of a little football ground at Old Trafford.

History: This race has been around for a while, but came to a stop in 2002, and then restarted in 2012. The legendary Ron Hill won it in 1969 and 1971. He was starting the race, and taking part in the relay event.

This new race is truly a "big city" marathon. Around 8000 runners, so not the size of London, but:

Just about every section of the route was lined with spectators, cheering. Quite incredible. On the sections that were out and back (not all of it), the crowd was massive - several deep and cheering. The whole of Altrincham and Timperly seemed to be out on the streets.

Can't fault the organisation. Clear instructions, easy to work out what to do and when to do it. Water ever two miles, energy gels/and drinks every third water station. Lots of marshals etc.

Lots of split points on route, with real time uploads to your own facebook page, as well as on the web site, so very easy for friends and family to work out what was going on.

Closed roads - not bad for 26 miles - so great to see that the majority of residents just came out and cheered, offered jelly babies etc.

A nice touch is having your name on your number, so that people can cheer you by name.

Last mile or so coming into the finish at the Stadium was just a wall of sound.

Lots of people making the most of a traffic free day and partying hard.

So, all the atmosphere of London, but NO BALLOT. You could even enter up to 4pm on the Saturday before.

Swag: For the money, you get a well organised race, with lots of well manned feed stations, plus a big medal and the usual bag of swag.

The course:

It's pretty flat - most of the hills were just bridges over the various water ways (lots of canals round there) and railway tracks and main roads. A bit of a lump at the turn around at Altrincham, but nothing too painful.

A fast road surface, most of the course is well sheltered, with the only exposed bit on a loop out into the countryside around mile 30 or so.

It's ideal for PBs. The terrain makes pacing plans a lot easier too.

With 7000 runners and a leading car, closed roads and everything lined with crowds, you can't drift off the course.

The volume of runners makes it a bit tricky. There were some very crowded sections, especially around the pacers.

My race:

I started, I finished. All went reasonably well except for the last 2km, when my legs fell off. See training log for the detail.

I stayed in the Holiday Inn in Media City. A nicer hotel than a budget one (paid for by my reward points). They knew all about the marathon, and gave me a pre-race pack (map of course, and directions on how to get to the start). They also started breakfast at 6:00am on Sunday, instead of the usual 7:00am, again, ideal for people with a 9am race wanting to eat 3 hours before. A very nice touch.

I used public transport to get there (why I went over night), as I thought my legs would be destroyed, so wouldn't be capable of safely driving a car. Manchester stations are well served by the rest of the country for trains. And then the fancy new(ish) trams run a good service (except there were some major works going on) out to either the start or to Salford quays.

Should you do this?

If you want to do a Marathon, I can't think of one much better than this. The start is just on the South Side of Salford quays and the new MediaCity (yes, it is spelled like that), so there are masses of hotels around, and it makes a great venue for exploring the third greatest city (or second, or fourth) of the country.

It has all the atmosphere of London, is extremely well run, you'll get a faster time, and, more importantly, you can just enter it.

It's well worth the entry fee, and you can leave entry relatively late thus minimising the risk of an expensive DNS.

[kfjatek]

Well done on completing - too bad about the last couple of kms of course, but hey - if it all had gone to plan it would have been a bit boring and you wouldn't have learnt anything about yourself, eh?

offered jelly babies

I think I might be in for next year...

[KidStardust]

Unusually concise for you Jack (the report, not the race). A great performance though, really great given your unfortunate history of breaking.

I've still no idea how you managed to sneak past me, both out and back, on the corner of Brooklands Road. My 'supportive' torrents of abuse were left wasted. There's always next year though...

[King Sad]

Oh well done both of you Glad that my home town put on a good show. Most importantly you didn't break

[Jack Hughes]

Unusually concise for you Jack (the report, not the race). A great performance though, really great given your unfortunate history of breaking.

I've still no idea how you managed to sneak past me, both out and back, on the corner of Brooklands Road. My 'supportive' torrents of abuse were left wasted. There's always next year though...

Only concise because the rest of it is on the training log. Three installments including this!


Pity I missed seeing you.

[Jack Hughes]

And another thing.

One of the sponsors was Erdinger. So there was unlimited quantities of Erdinger to quaff at the finish. Ok, it was Alkoholfrei, but even so...

[IronMorg]

Good write up and I'll echo everything you say about it as an event. Its why I'm almost certainly running it again next year, due to the financial headache that London creates for me and Liz - I enter GFA in June, she wouldn't find out if she was in until October meaning if I enter we would have to pay for two weekends in Spring if she didn't get into London, or if she got in and I hadn't used my GFA, it would be reversed. Manchester solves it as we can enter the same time and she still gets a good big city marathon experience.

[Jack Hughes]

I can't see how the atmosphere could be any better at London. Once you have a deafening wall of people, adding some more won't make much difference.

I also forgot to add that the seeding and pens was good.

Far better than at the last Abbey Dash 10k that I did.

Your race number was colour coded, which kept people from being over ambitious. Only one or two started in the wrong place. They were soon trampled over.

[Seasider71]

A fast road surface, most of the course is well sheltered, with the only exposed bit on a loop out into the countryside around mile 30 or so.

No wonder your legs fell off if they managed to squeeze over 30 miles into a marathon....

[IanM]

A fast road surface, most of the course is well sheltered, with the only exposed bit on a loop out into the countryside around mile 30 or so.

No wonder your legs fell off if they managed to squeeze over 30 miles into a marathon....

Ah, the KingSad approach to Marathon running!