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Comments
The 2010 t-shirt was a belter.
It was so good I bought another one after the race and still wear them regularly.
Saw a few people wih this years on and it looked ok to me - but I do like the way the 2010 one has the word MARATHON in bloody huge big block capital letters.
For £40 though they ought to do something about the weather.
Oh - and I paid £40 for this years race, got injured so I couldnt run, and they wouldnt give me any refund or defer to next year. I reckon thats a crock so Edinburgh can get stuffed in future.
I think £40 in return for sod all is worse value than getting a sub standard t-shirt
Kicked-It
Did you do the Coniston Trail Marathon? Now that had a great t-shirt and they even managed to organise the best weather of the year. If only they could have been bothered to clear the paths of stones they would have been the best organisers ever.
MP
Did Staveley and that was the most rubbishest t-shirt ever, (grey with white writing?) and the organisers had left huge great big mountains lying about in the way of the route causing runners to have to run up-hill a great deal wich is very inconvenient. They did manage to arrange some excellet weather though
They took their eye off the ball at Derentwater last week thoughand ordered rian by mistake. T-shirt was brilliant but same issue with large mountains getting in the way of the route.
Coniston isnt till 1st October Max??
I expect a quality t-shirt and with plenty of time to level the course a bit and put some tarmac down there should be no excuse for these shoddy running surfaces.
it wasnt just the shirt that pissed me off it was the whole marathon,i ran it in 2010 and really enjoyed the finish in the race course and seeing my wife there to greet me.but this year was crap no one saw you finish then you had a long walk to the meeting point then a bloody long walk to the buses.
ps crazy diamond Ihave complained to the organisers that was the first thing i did.
I just had my t-shirt too. I wasn't fussed about the t-shirt but saw it as a point of principle as by paying £48 I expected a race that was in receipt of better organisational skills.
I was one of the last to cross the line, and having no spectators near the finish wasn't nice as it felt like you were running into a ghost town, but it's the fact that people had been allowed to help themselves to stuff (whether they ran the race or not) makes you feel that you aren't really being considered. I saw families helping themselves to whole trays of water and lucozade and just walking off with it - runners behind me (there were more then) may have needed fluids and had to go without.
Many marshals had disappeared from water stations before people had finished too.
I e-mailed them as requested regarding the t-shirt (and my OH didn't get a half-marathon medal due to them having given them out at random to people) and my first e-mail went to the woman who had asked me to e-mail. My second went to an auto-response saying that she didn't work for GSI anymore and to e-mail the 'info' address. That e-mail then went to someone else who fobbed me off with a response about waiting for the sponsors to sort things out, and the next e-mail ended up going to someone else who said that they were still waiting for the sponsors.
I've done Edinburgh 3 times hoping that they would have become better organised each time, but it seems to get worse each time.
I've heard the stories about the crush of people coming in at around 4:20-4:40, and my OH has stories from the Half. It's not that the organisation is absolutely horrendous, it just needs fine-tuning, and maybe a bit of customer service to people. It could be a fantastic race if people felt they weren't just being seen as a way for a company to make a quick profit. Their other events don't sound particularly well-organised, but I've only done this one, so can't speak for kilomathon for example.
I agree with the comments made by Vixx76. My husband also emailed many times about his t shirt. It eventually arrived a few days ago and the quality is laughable when compared with the ones distributed on the day. I should stress that neither of us entered the run for the t shirt alone, but if the organisers arranged for a good quality t shirt for the finishers originally, why did they think a cheap alternative was acceptable for people who were given the wrong one first time around, not to mention making them wait three months to receive it - then suggesting you wear it with pride! This, coupled with the general poor organisation of this event, makes you feel you've been taken for a ride. I was really looking forward to the run but the chaos at the end made us both decide to give it a miss in future.
DW30 - it would be really interesting to see their response to your complaint and whether they plan to learn from their runner's poor experiences. Don't know if it would be worth highlighting this thread to them since the general feeling about the organisation and apparent disregard for paid up competitors seems to be pretty damning. I'm sure there'll be a very similar thread on Fetch as well as any other running forums out there as the complaints do seem to be pretty consistent.
Yeah, we're all just a number when we run a marathon but every marathon is individual to that runner and has been chosen for a specific reason. As such it probably means a great deal to that runner (I only look at scenic races - never gonna win one so may as well enjoy the view on the way hurling my guts up). The monetary investment can vary but the time, energy and emotional investment is something that should not be so demeaned by poor management and an apprent disregard for the care of the organiser's runners.