The London Marathon Part 1 of 3

I was having a conversation with a friend from Loughborough about the difference between the British and the Americans. The talk wasn't something controversial. Nothing about the accent, the lifestyle, politics or traditions as you may have thought. It was just the choice of words that they use most of the time.

She said, " You know, I am quite tired of the way British flatter themselves. All they do is call themselves Great, Great and Great. Great Britain, Great Ormond Street, Great Barford Bypass! And as if Great wasn't good enough, they even have Greater. Greater London, Greater Manchester, Greater Glasgow. "

I said, "Well, The Americans? Can you say that they are more subdued with their ego. They too like to be known as being on top of things so they settle for "New". New York, New Jersey, New Orleans, New Mexico, New Hampshire. They brand themselves as being the latest. It's still an obsession. Oh well, I suppose it's for motivation purposes. Like it or loathe it, these two countries made it as the super powers of the world. So, it doesn't matter whether they were Great or New! They are super and they are powerful!"

So, what's all these got to do with the London Marathon? Nothing I suppose. Just firing the first salvo about what I thought of the race. It was Great! It was New for me! I suppose there's something I could agree on this time; the Great London Marathon. O gosh, it's gonna be a long race report from here. I haven't even spoken anything about the race! But since I'm writing this in Scotland, I will continue parts 2 and 3 in Cambridge.

At the Excel London and entrance to registration

I left for London a day earlier to collect my running bib and to find out the location of the start line. Collection was at the Excel London and start line was at Greenwich Park. How significant! What better place to start the race than at the mother of all start lines; the Greenwich Meridian Line! What is that? If you've been traveling in different time zones, you'd be told of the time in your location in the GMT format. So it's like GMT+1, GMT+8 etc. Malaysia's time zone for example is GMT+8. GMT being the Greenwich Mean Time, Great Britain is at GMT. As the name suggests, the dividing line is located at Greenwich!

The mother of all times. What better way to start the marathon than at the Greenwich Meridian Line

The collection was housed in this big hall at the Excel London. It was a big exhibition centre like the PWTC or KLCC Exhibition Centre. Just huge. But it was necessary because the crowd was tremendous. When I reached Excel at 3pm, the energy surrounding the place was incredible. Buntings were hung to greet runners, there was a band rolling out tunes to pump up the motivation level of the people, people were walking out of the building with the race bags and the weather was great!

The organising in Excel was absolutely fantastic. You can tell that the organisers did not do this for the first time. The flow of registration was an impeccable arrangement; the point we collected our numbers to the point where we are officially registered for the race. Going to Excel was an experience of its own. I have been in the organiser's position before (Penchala Tunnel Run) and Excel certainly presented a learning experience as to how a sophisticated race like an international marathon should be organised. Little details like queuing by the range of numbers helped to avoid the jostling and pushing in the queue.

The range of running numbers. Wait, where's 51000-53,000???!!!

For a race like London, you can bet that there was certainly a massive range of numbers at the booths and they had many of them.

You can see that running is getting more and more sophisticated by the way registrations are done. Previously, you just go to the booth and have your names ticked on a piece of paper. Today, every runner is given an enveloped that contains their bib number, chip and stickers to be tagged on your bag. The envelope is bar-coded.

The registration flow- Get your running envelope which contains your bib number, chip and a bar-code; scan and you're registered!

So, you take the envelope and ChampionChip to be scanned together into the system and voila, you're registered! Then you move on to registering your email address so that you can be contacted as soon as the results and photos are out.

Email registration for the marathon photos.

When you run with the chip on race day, the split time is automatically keyed into the system. With such accuracy and efficiency, runners could basically know their running time as soon as they cross the finishing line! That's really fast! But since you've registered your email address earlier, they will send out the results to your email too. Now, that is what I call sophistication and London was just that.

There is something for everyone in Excel.

Excel had something for everybody in every nook and cranny of the venue. I did pay alot of attention to the GPS-based Garmin navigation system which is "God-sent" for runners. You can basically map out your running course and calculate the actual distance of the course after your regular training or race. Forget about arguing if you've done an actual 10km race or that half marathon in PJ was only 20.1 km, the Garmin will give you the answer. From marathon peripherals, liquid fuels, new running products to signing a huge autograph board, you wouldn't notice that you've while away a couple of hours until your feet starts to ache and you have a race tomorrow! When I attempted to stamp my mark on the autograph board, I could hardly squeeze in anything within those confined spaces that earlier runners have signed on. No space, just too tiny for anything.

Lucozade, one of the main sponsors of the race, provided a useful pacetracker wrist band to provide tracking assistance. I tried taking the 4.5 hour band but it was gone by the time I went to take one. Are they serious? So many people aiming for that? People can't be any worse than me, could they???

Pace tracker. The 4.5-hour wrist was gone! So were the 5 and 5.5! I settled for the 4hr 20min band instead.

What I found interesting in Excel was the number of European and British Marathons that had their individual booths represented on that day. Those marathons that would make us drool in Malaysia; Paris, Stockholm, Dublin, Venice and the Berlin Marathons.

Booths for upcoming marathons

There were also those that I felt like going e.g Vienna, Porto, Edinburgh, Blackpool, Turin, Lausanne and the Beirut Marathons. The venue was such a mecca for marathons. It was a buffet!

The red start line

The number of toilets available at one of the three start lines. Good clue about the sheer number of runners who'd be turning up for the race.

After collecting the race pack, I headed for the start line to get a feel of the travel time that would be required in the morning. I went to Greenwich Park. Damn, I was glad I did that because I had trouble finding the red start line and it would have been a mess if I tried doing that in the morning. Also, it proved to be extremely useful in the end as I nearly missed the race in the morning, and I really mean not running the marathon. Stay tuned for Part 2.....

The plastic bag that was given to put my belongings on race day. It's a huge bag. Backpack inserted to indicate the things that could fit into it.

All set for the race. Final checklist; chip: check!, red shoe lace: check! bib number: check!, Gel: check!, alarm set: check!, breakfast for tomorrow: check!