← Malta Marathon
After 2019’s race being cancelled due to weather it was a great gesture for organisers to offer free entry for international runners in 2020.
Communication before the race via email was frequent and informative. Tshirts wouldn’t arrive in time for collection due to the postal delays from China with the Coronavirus, again great gesture to refund €5 to each runner not living in Malta and unable to collect at a later date.
Number collection was at the Marriott Hotel which could have been much better organised and actually was in 2019.
If you book the bus, you’re collect at Sliema harbour and taken straight to Mdina where the start line is.
Plenty of portaloos for pre-race, chance to have a little warm up and look around Mdina before. Baggage busses were unmanned DHL vans. There was no allocated van for my number so my number so went in a van which had no specific numbers. This made collecting my bag at the end quite difficult as even the volunteers couldn’t help me find it and didn’t even try.
Straight after the startline there is a steep decline for the first half mile which isn’t wise enough meaning you do get a bottle neck situation and pretty much all runners ended up walking this!
The half marathon route was from Mdina to Sliema with one section where you turn and run back on yourself. Marathon runners, who started nearly 2 hours before, merge with you shortly before this point.
I’d say a great course for PB’s, very picturesque and a great way to see bits of the island. The weather was 20degrees, there were plenty of water, poweraid and sponge stations along the course, I would say maybe a couple of showers would be benificial too.
A few additional distance signs coming up to the end would have been nice to push a little more. Once crossing the line you are immediately met with a queue of people waiting to have a massage, I think this tent could have been a little further back as you get a little stuck even before being able to collect your medal, water, poweraid, banana and space blanket.
It’s a nice race, a few things that could do with attention but I enjoyed it over all.
