Edinburgh is a great place and its distinctive blue/white Edinburgh Marathon Festival (EMF) branding suggests: this is something rather special, not just another running event. The organisers do say it is the fastest marathon in the UK and the second biggest after London. So I did run Edinburgh with some expectations and not all of them were met. Here the details:
Is it special? Well, in some ways it is, but if you expect to run through the fantastic and iconic streets of the centre of Edinburgh (as I certainly thought I would), disappointment lurks around the corner. Only the first few miles are actually in Edinburgh and none of them actually go through the beautiful centre. What remains is running a few miles along the seafront and many miles through mainly uninspired suburbs and roads where you know, the sea is somewhere out there, but too often not in sight.
Is it well organised? All the basics are covered very well: start line, baggage transport and finish area with charity village and food choices. However, the finish is not in Edinburgh but, from the view of an ignorant external, in the middle of nowhere. Yes, we were encouraged to and we did order shuttle bus tickets for the journey back, but walking after a marathon another 2 miles to catch a cramped shuttle bus and then having yet another 30 minutes journey before you can hobble your way back from Edinburgh’s centre to your hotel was not fun. There must be another way of doing this.
Is it fast? The Edinburgh Marathon claims to be the fasted in the UK. I am not quite sure where this claim comes from, definitely not from the course record. The course is not as hilly as you would expect it for this area and it does give you a kind of a head start with a downhill stretch to begin with. But the claim “fastest marathon” sets wrong expectation and I was surprised by the constant slight inclines and declines along the route. Normally it would not had been a problem, but I just did not expect it because of the claim being the fastest.
Is it fun? Fun can be relative and its a bit in the head of each runner. But it does help that people are fun and friendly. But for my taste I was missing a bit of variety.
And what about the medal? Well, the medal is uber cool. First, the shape of a long rectangle is quite unique and second, there is a section cut out in shape of the hilly Edinburgh skyline, which you can find in your goody bag as part of a key ring that can be placed like a jigsaw piece back into the medal. I am calling greek alert over my excitement of this, but hey… Here is the picture 🙂
Conclusion: Edinburgh is a great city to visit and from this perspective you can’t go wrong coming here for the marathon. However, the event itself did not turn out as great to me as the organiser’s claims of being the fastest, biggest, greatest might suggest.
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