This is my 104 marathon and my first marathon in Jerusalem. Great course an outstanding organization. A lot of hills but this is Jerusalem. I will run this marathon again next year and the year after. This marathon is one of the hardest marathon out of my 103 marathons that i ran. I hope next year they will pass a sport drinks.

I was due to run the full marathon but a recent illness led me to drop back to the half so some of my comments should be taken with that in mind.

Read last year and all the improvements I asked for have been made. The running numbers have your name on them, the route marking and kilometrage is excellent and the colours for the different events are much clearer. The course is better but still strikingly scenic and putting a view of the world's most beautiful cityscape at 20miles must be a good idea even though it is during yet another tough hill!

The final 100m in the park is now hard surface but the weather oh the weather! If you are running this do not assume it will be hot dry middle eastern marathon. It was 8 degrees with horizontal hail and storms which I last encountered running the Reykjavik marathon.
This is an excellent marathon and I commend it to anyone, just do not under-dress!

This was the first ever Jerusalem Marathon and judging by my experiences it will turn out to be the first of many. The main attraction, of course, is the course and the highlight of that is the short section through the old city where you run through the Jaffa gate past the Tower of David and the streets of the Armenian quarter watched by clergy and monks and then past the site of the last supper to emerge through the Zion gate. The rest of the course rides the various hills of the city offering panorama after panorama of the spiritual centre of the world seen,finally, at 24 miles from Mount Scopus. It would be breathtaking if the hilly course had not already done that.
The streets were traffic free and well well marshaled - no traffic no pedestrians getting in the way and lots of enthusiastic policemen giving support, Closed streets that might have made it difficult or spectators to get to the city centre too as support was poor.
Though late March the weather was cold and the air crisp at 800m so heat was no problem.
Organisation was very efficient in general thought the sharing of a T shirt with the half and 10k did devalue it a little.

Registration was simple and a good expo helped.
There were plenty of water stations and a great bonus water in bottles with sports caps ( New York, Berlin, Rome, Basel,Florence etc, etc -learn from this!!) and gels on offer too ( kosher of course in this holy city).
The rainy spell had turned the final 50m in the park into first world war no mans land but the finish was otherwise excellent and refreshments well organised.

Bad points. Distance markers were poorly displayed or even absent. Not enough isotonics and results were not on website by the end of the day nor sent by text.
Finally, why is it only the Swiss who print your name with your running number. It is such an simple way to make sure the spectators can encourage you on.

In summary, a great debut and if they fix some of the glitches it will be one of the world's greatest, though hilliest, city marathon courses.
I will be back