UKC

I've usually assumed that marathon runners would be planning ahead for their marathons. Our running club organises the Strathearn Marathon, being run this Sunday. At the start of May, we had 126 entries, and we now have 190 entries. We've had about 10 entries this week! There seem to be a whole bunch of people treating it as a training run for the West Highland Way race in a couple of weeks. Not that I'm complaining - it'll be a better race with more people, and it'll be more money for the club, even if it does mean we might be short a t-shirt or two.

So, how far in advance do you plan your marathons?

In reply to tony:

It could well be that people have been training for this/a marathon at this time but weren't sure they would be ready so waited till they were before entering

In reply to tony:
It depends, My spring and fall main ones a good 6 months in advance, but then I'll add others and 50k's a month in advance, sometimes later if I feel I need a longer quality training run.. a tad late for the WHW though.

Ones like Strathearn, for me they'd not be key races, so I'd only enter them late on. The ones I'd enter early would be those like London, Chicago.. If I don't think a race will fill up, especially a training race, I'd not enter until I was sure I was running.

I need a new Boston qualifier before September so I'll probably run another soon.

In reply to tony:

As a proportion of the race fee £2 is not that much. For smaller races like the recent Scolty hill race that are only £6 to begin with, it's a much higher percentage.
Just why do we have to pay Scottish Athletics this unproportional levy?
What is the stranglehold do they have over Scottish running?
What do they do for the race entrants?

There are other providers of insurance for example.

In reply to digby:



They want you to join, £10 for the year rather than £2 per race.


It is not just Scotland it is a UK wide thing with England Athletics etc.



There are, ARC for example, but UK Athletics won't recognise there results on Pof10 and RunBritain

In reply to tony:

I think a lot of runners forget that there are 100s of marathons around the country and also that a decent number of people just enjoy running marathons and do several a year. I guess some people will have done London, Machester, Brighton or something, had a few weeks of easy running and though it would be nice to find some thing low key in a month. or Edinburgh runnings who had a good / bad run and decided to follow up with another soon after.

In reply to tony:
Some people run one a month. I've entered on the day on a smaller one mainly because I saw it last minute and wasn't doing anything.

It really depends on why you are running it. I think not many people go out with the aim to win and quite a few just run for fun.

I do a half marathon every month, they're obviously a lot less strain but I also do a 20mile training run once every couple of months just to keep me up there. Seems to work.

In reply to The New NickB:


Dream on! It's £18. You don't have to have anything to do with SAL in Scotland to put on a race and some of the nicest races I've done have had no SAL involvement.
It's annoying to read that a race is 'permitted' by SAL. They have no authority to permit or prevent races.

In reply to tony:

I entered the Excalibur the week before ..about 20 minutes before the deadline. Decided not to bother with anything long this year but then entered on a whim having done nothing more than a few 8/9 mile club runs. The event itself was no pressure, no expectations and an absolute delight. I might adopt it as a strategy in future

Hope your event went well!