My third race overseas and despite the language barrier everything was very easy to navigate. The expo was the best I've seen so far although it was only by accident that I found the goody bag area for athletes. We stayed in a hotel about 1km from the race start so I had a decent chance for a warm up without too many other people around as I made my way to the race area. I didn't find the starting corrals easily identifiable so I just opted to start at the very back and play catch up as I made my way around the course, the start of the course was a bit challenging as it is largely in an area with lots of narrow streets and tall buildings so the brisk wind was howling through some of the roads which made things a bit more challenging. More challenging than that was the unexpected arrival of the fast paced relay runners after the first few kilometres which was always going to be difficult as they became mixed up with us slower paced runners and created a small degree of chaos at some water stations. Everything else was top notch though, the water stations were fantastic with pretty much everything you could realistically ask for, and with lots of music bands along the way, mostly very good crowd support, a flat course and cool weather it was just the most enjoyable marathon I've done so far and I'd love to do it again. The finish is superb, inside a concert hall with a good flow of people passing from the finish line to the finish area where medals and refreshemnts were available and these too were excellent with tea, water, enrgy drinks, bananas, beer, bread and energy bars all freely available, another positive was that after the finish area you could easily filter back into the auditorium in order to stay warm after the race. 

The only other issues were self inflicted, pulling a muscle in the warm up, a low battery on my garmin and an injury blighted training plan meaning I was way off full fitness-so I have every reason to go back and do it again next year!