Auckland Marathon

I know that coming from the North American prairies, when a course description uses the term 'rolling' that means hilly to us. The first half, including the bridge crossing, certainly fit the bill. The out-and-back second half has its own challenges, but was very flat by comparison. The finish line area gets a little busy with the staged starts for all events meaning that there is significant crossover of the three different distances, but it was organized well so that it did not present an issue. The only real problem we had was with our 4 hour pace bunny. The announcements just before the race suggested runners try to achieve negative splits, especially in light of the first half being more difficult. By the 10k mark, we asked the bunny about his apparent fast start and he indicated he was aiming for a 1:51 first half! We let him go and ran our own pace to get the time we had trained for. We are from Canada and made a vacation of it, spending 2 weeks in NZ in total. Wonderful country, great city and a nice destination marathon.

This is a great mid-size race. The first half has a few rollers, but once you get across the Harbour Bridge, the course is primarily flat, with only a very slight incline in the final mile. Organization-wise, it was superb. The ferry ride to Devonshire was easy (especially since we stayed at the hotel just across the street from the ferry building), there were plenty of porta potties for the marathoners, and the start was the most uncrowded of any of my 10 marathons. The views are spectacular! There wasn't much at the expo, so be prepared and bring your own nutrition instead of relying on purchasing it at the expo. We came from the west coast of the US and had no problems with jet lag. Arrived on Friday for the Sunday race and stayed on west coast time, which helped when we had a 3:30am wake up (7:30 pacific time) for the ferry Sunday morning! If you love mid size races and love to travel, this is a must-do.

PROS: Cool to take the ferry to the Devonshire start, great course. Wonderful sunrise, scenery. Great crowd support. CONS: Twisty and turny towards the end. Hard to get to from the US