Overall it was a very rewarding experience for my first marathon. Beautiful course!! Very tough course and you definitely knew you had run a marathon. Crowd support was great (especially in Kitsilano) and I had a fantastic day.

General comments...
Start time too early. It is very hard to prepare for a marathon that starts at 7.15am.

Coming from a metric country (most of the world is) having mile splits is useless. If you have every mile marked you should have every kilometre marked as well, not every 5.

Drink station at start/finish line (9 km) was empty.

T-shirt pick up should be part of refreshment area. After finishing I went straight to get t-shirt and was not allowed back into refreshment area and thus did not get a drink or anything to eat. I had to see friends and family (Australia) through the 'prison' fence.

The course was brilliant...Smartly planned...Well laid-out...Very diverse terrain...I would, however, strongly recommend advising non-local runners of the many hills - particularly the biggie on Stanley Park...The drink volunteers - particularly in the middle miles - were woefully inefficient, more often than not handing out near-empty cups. Several times I had to stop and go directly to the table myself to get fluids. The expo also was very disappointing. All in all an extremely average experience. I would not do this marathon again

I thoroughly enjoyed Vancouver and had a good time running my second marathon there. My main criticism is that the worst part of the course, the out-and-back through Kitsilano, comes at the end. It would be much better to get this over with earlier in the run. Stanley Park is gorgeous, the spectators were great and the race was relatively well organized (although not at the start when the half marathoners had to make their way through the port-a-potty lines of marathoners to get to the start line). I like running hills so didn't mind the 3x over the Burrard Bridge, and found the most significant hill at mile 13 or so in Stanley Park very doable. All in all, this was a great experience, Vancouver is a wonderful destination city and I would recommend this run.

I really enjoyed the marathon. I only did the 1/2 marathon and will come back next year. It was well organized. Someone had commented on not liking the t-shirts; I thought they were pretty nice, but you can't please everyone. I thought the food in the end was out of this world...gosh...I was amazed. I used to live in the West End of Vancouver years ago and the marathon took me right down where I used to play tennis, ride my bike, roller-skate, jog and just have fun. I really enjoyed the marathon and I will be back next year better prepared for the hill in Stanley Park.

This was my first Marathon. It was fun, challenging and rewarding all at the same time. I especially liked the hail. Can we order fire and brimstone for next year and make it real fun race?

Not enough or well staffed H2O stations, course has lots of long raising hills.

Beautiful scenery and many spontaneous, cheering spectators. The marathoners this year were quite fun --- a large contingent from Dallas, Texas running for leukemia research. The shirts this year are much improved from those previous. As mentioned in previous runner submissions, Power Gels are only distributed at mile 18, when they really are more required further back in Stanley Park. Overall, I was pleased with the experience and would run it again!

I live in Vancouver and have run the Vancouver Marathon 2 times. There's nothing like running a course that's home to you. I have 2 complaints. Firstly, the course takes the runners over the Burrard Street Bridge 3 times and secondly, the Power Gels should be available way before mile 18. Mile 18 is much too late to be thinking about gels. If you haven't started taking them by then, you're hooped. Aside from these two points, the scenery is amazing and the crowd support outside of Stanley Park is great.

I have run this twice and volunteered twice. Come for a vacation not the race - the medal and shirt are lousy, and the course considering the city's natural beauty is 'uninspired'. The course is run to inconvenience the city as little as possible -- but it is still a marathon and the destination to visit is fabulous.

I have run three straight Vancouver Marathons. I find the seven A.M time too early to run this early in May. Victoria and Kelowna are run at 8.00AM. One hour at this time of year, makes a big difference.