Posts Tagged ‘marathon facts’

Image by Julian Mason via Flickr

It’s that time of year again. The Virgin London Marathon media guide is out! Each year the people at London Marathon release the fact pack for media organisations across the world to fuel up on the details of the event before race day. I imagine that it’s a great resource for the commentators, who have to fill hours of air time chatting once the elite runners have finished.

I did a little round-up in 2009, and again in 2010. So to save you from sifting through 244 pages of PR spiel, here’s a selection of 2011 Virgin London Marathon facts that I think are worthy of a mention.

Enjoy.

SJAL x
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Every year the London Marathon team release a media pack, designed to give journalists and sports presenters all the fuel they need to provide an entertaining report/broadcast come race day. Last year I stumbled upon it while I was doing some research to find out what was in store for me (having never run a marathon before).

The London Marathon Media Guide is full of great statistics and facts about the London Marathon. It’s also 210 pages long so to save you some time I’ve lifted some of the key sections for you here.

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I am now fully immersed in marathon excitement/frustration/anxiety. There are 4 more days to go until this is all over and every part of me is wishing Sunday would hurry up and get here. The lack of exercise is driving me slightly loopy. I’m constantly fidgeting, doodling and finding every excuse to move around. Today I ran up the stairs at work as fast as I could like a little school boy, taking three steps at a time. I even jumped ahead with my checklist and bought my 7 DVDs to watch on Saturday today. One of which was Run Fat Boy Run.

Although I’m ready and raring to go, a side of me is wishing I had longer. I have no idea what I’m going to do with myself after the marathon is over and done with and apparently I’m not alone with this feeling. There is actually a condition called post marathon depression, where a person, instead of feeling relief and a sense of achievement, feels empty and falls into a lull. I’m sure I’ll be feeling the former, plus I have a 10k race booked in after (in which I’m hoping to break the 50-minute mark).

Over the past few days all I’ve done is research the London Marathon in a bid to get a feel for what the experience is going to be like. I don’t want any surprises coming my way on Sunday. In doing so I stumbled across the London Marathon media pack, which contains a multitude of brilliant facts about the marathon – like the following:

• The most money raised for charity by a single marathon runner was £1,841,138
• This year over 150,000 people applied to run the marathon, around 50,000 normally get accepted and around 36,000 actually start
• The most common profession amongst this year’s runners is teaching/education
• 159 of the runners will be celebrating their birthday on race day
• 300 litres of blue paint will be used to paint the line on the course that represents the shortest distance
• 750,000 bottles of water will be distributed throughout the course
• The fastest time run in a Santa outfit is 3:12:27!

However, this is the most worrying fact…

• Number of urinal bays at the start = 400

Lets say that out of the 36,000 people that normally start, 20,000 odd are men (this year the number of men out-weigh the women at around 3-1). Lets also assume that every man will need the loo at least once during the build up to the start. That equates to 50 men per urinal! This is probably why the London Marathon magazine in the starters pack contains this picture…

I’ve always been one for toilet humour.