I came over while visiting Venice for a few days. I took the water taxi over in the afternoon some 4 hours prior to the race start to pick up my packet. Nowhere on the website was information regarding the water taxis not running after midnight! As it came to 8 p.m., there seemed to be disorganization regarding the start time. Sure enough, the marathon started at 9 p.m., not 8. The organizers never updated the english section of the web-site to reflect this. So, needless to say I didn't finish until 1:30 a.m. having done a 4:37 marathon. My wife and son were waiting for me and we had to sleep in the park where bag-drop was until the buses began running again at 6 a.m.! I spoke with a few other Americans who had also been misinformed about the start time. Other than that, running in sometimes total darkness with people I couldn't communicate with was fun! I really enjoyed the lighthouse/beach finish. I would do it again, but stay in Jessalo that night to have somewhere to keep warm after the race.

I don't have any complaints about the marathon. It was funny to run some parts of the course in complete darkness. I also was happy to see plenty of encouraging spectators around the final part of the race (32-40 KM) in spite of the night time. Thanks to them I could manage to make my fist negative split in the race.

Kudos on the number of water/food stations! However, toward the end of the marathon, when you needed or looked for one the most, they were nowhere to be found! Parts of the course were beautiful while on other parts you were running in almost complete darkness, barely even able to see the ground in front of you. I went with a group of people and finished with a PR of 4 hours, 17 minutes, and 4 seconds, so I was very pleased. I also give kudos to the number of toilets along the way. There were about 1,000 marathon runners and 2,000 half marathon runners, including my wife - Birgul Carter - who finished her 1st half marathon in 2 hours, 8 minutes, and 13 seconds - or 9 minute and 48 second pace.

According to my Garmin 305 Forerunner, the course was 40.1% ascent 41.2% descent, 18.7% flat. A big critique on the course layout is when it has you running what seems to be about 5K in one direction with a turn-around point where you are watching runners return on the other side of the same street. Very demoralizing! If you are a slow runner like a few of my friends running, even though you have 6 hours to finish, the organizers turned off the visible finish line clock at 5 hour 45 minutes - even though they were still recording time. To their credit, they did wait for the course's last three runners (all 3 were from our group). The course was fairly fast with only a few mild hills. Parts of the course were kind of confusing because even though the half marathon and full marathon course were slightly different, the full marathon overlapped into the half marathon's course and you pass the half marathon's start line and finish line, so throughout the full marathon you see kilometer readings in parts for both the half and full marathon. Overall, I would still run this again if given the opportunity.

Only water at the finish!