Milano City Marathon

1. Registration process was ridicolously bureaucratic, confused and very poorly communicated. Several prerequisites including a medical certificate from your doctor. Despite submitting several weeks before the race, approval was not provided until 4 (!) days before the race. Email replies were not helpful. 2. The expo had lots of stalls. The officlal Asics gear available for purchase was a SS shirt, a hat ... and that's it. 3. The official rules were clear that you had to be at your designated entry date to the park by 7:45am. Turned out (a) the park was basically accessible from any entrance, and (b) if you weren't dropping off gear, you could have simply entered your start corrall a few minutes before the 9am start. 4. The start corrals included a mix of marathon and relay runners. Once you get to the start itself, the field splits into relay on the left, marathon on the right. There is very little warning of this - by the time you get there, if you're on the wrong side, it's impossible to fight through the crowd to get in the right lane. I ended up crossing the mat in the relay lane which I think is why my time is missing from the results. 5. The course is generally flat. There are several cobble/tram track sections in the centre of the city. Aid stations are good including water bottles. 6. The relay starts quite a while after the marathon which results in fast relay runners barging through the marathon pack. I was bumped from behind quite heavily, no apology, just sped through. 7. Shirt and medal are given at the end and both are nice. 8. By my watch (and others seemed similar), distance measured about 42.8km. So a mixed experience overall. Glad to have done it but would not repeat.

This marathon course really has it all, wonderful buildings like the Duomo and San Siro, mostly flat and well organised. Lots of drinks, fruit and food available for the runners. Nice under armour running shirt in the bag.

I knew Milano was not a big marathon, but I didn't expect that. Organization was pretty good, the expo was fine and getting the bib number was fast and easy which is what I like. Water and fruit stations during the race were great too. What I really missed during the race are some spectators and support, I find nobody from km 8 to km 39, which make the marathon a bit hard, on the other side the route during the 42K is just awful. It could not have been worst. Moreover the results are not correct for many runners, they don't show the net time for many of us which I found pitiful and it seems a third division marathon. To end up, happy to have run another marathon but I don't recommend Milano Marathon to anyone.