This was my first time doing Barcelona Marathon. I had read great reviews about it and it was advertised as a flat course which is one of the reasons why I chose to do this one.

I thought the expo was really good, there was lots of stalls. It was one of the best expo's I have been to. Picking up my race number was fairly quick. You pick up your t-shirt at the expo. They didn't have any t-shirts left in my size. I was given a medium but luckily it didn't come up too big.

I thought the starting corals wasn't very clear. I was in the grey wave but it seemed to be hard to know where to stand for grey wave. There was Barcelona music playing at the start and it was a great atmosphere. There was confetti when I started the race, I have never experienced that before!

The first 6 miles starts on an incline, I don't call that flat! I found the first few miles was congested and there was no space with runners in front of me, it was quite difficult to get past runners which slowed me down for a while.

There was water stations every 2.5km, there was plenty of water! They were also handing out fruit and energy gels which was later on in the race.

There was crowds along the course but I didn't think the crowd support was great, it didn't meet my expectation. I had my name on my vest but no one seemed to be calling my name out which I felt was disappointing.

The last 2 miles was on a hill which seemed to be a killer and it made it really hard! The goodie bag was decent. You got a medal, a bottle of water, a bottle of energy drink, a banana and a few other things.