to all who took part in the Champion Sports Cork City Marathon on 2nd June! We want to thank everyone who had a part in making it such a fantastic day for the city and suburbs – the participants, stewards and volunteers, medical staff, gardaí, the army, civil defence, the wonderful supporters along the route, the musicians, and of course our sponsors and partners. With the weekend upon us, we’ve cleared the ‘inbox’ and we’re hoping that you might have a few minutes to sit down and email us? If you took part in this year’s marathon, we’d love to hear how you got on. Whatever your experience, good or otherwise, we really would appreciate your feedback. While we mightn’t get the chance to reply to all emails, we will take all your opinions and suggestions on board for our review.
Here are some of the many issues we’ll be looking at over the coming months and that you might have suggestions about:
Water: It’s increasingly difficult to secure water sponsorship and we’re grateful to Tipperary for supplying us with some of the bottled water on the course. We’d like to use smaller bottles, to reduce waste, but would like to source a soft 250/300ml bottle (and of course a willing sponsor). Last year, someone suggested providing skips after the water station for people to throw their bottles into. We liked that idea a lot, but the cost of delivery and collection on a bank holiday proved prohibitive for this year’s race – any suggestions on how to reduce the discarded bottles/cups as you run through water stations?
How did you fare with the location of the water stations, with the 500ml bottles, with the cups?
Gatorade: We need to secure energy drink sponsor earlier for next year and get the information out to participants. How did you get on with the Gatorade? How about the positioning of the sampling stations at about the 14, 17 and 22-mile marks?
Traffic: We’re still working on trying to get the balance right between allowing movement in some areas and safety – safety, of course, taking precedence. Did you encounter any unauthorized traffic on the route?
Bicycles: We’ve had a report of one potentially dangerous incident involving an unauthorized bicycle on the course. Did you encounter any?
Course/Map: We didn’t have the map of the course until a couple of days beforehand this year – sincere apologies for that. Confirming the course and getting a map out early to you will be priority for next year’s race.
Website: More frequent updates and maintenance. More detailed information earlier. And…a photo gallery, which we’ve been promising for months but which still isn’t live – coming soon.
Entertainment: We had more musicians out on the course this year. I guess you can’t have enough so we’ll try for even more in 2009, but how did you feel about the positioning of the music, the type of music, etc?
If you have any opinions on the above or any aspect of the Cork Marathon, please do send us a brief email and let us know.
For now, Best wishes from (a very tired!) Cork Marathon Office
Email: [email protected]
Web: www.corkcitymarathon.ie
