Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch! Birmingham Half Marathon 09 Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch! Via Dave Harte
Over on Brumblr it’s been noticed that the route for this year’s Brum Half Marathon has been released. It’s flatter and therefore faster (in keeping with it being part of an official championships) and this time mainly does the Perhsore Road rather than any part of North Brum. What’s odd (apart from irrelevantly calling it the “race against climate change” again) is the addition of “visitor attractions” to the map. Are the runners likely to care? Landmarks for navigation I could understand. But even if you think that the attractions are for the benefit of spectators, the addition of the “visitor attraction” which is the site where building hasn’t even started to begin, that’s still a car park and some shrubs: Uploaded with plasq‘s Skitch! Come, it says, gaze at our future through tired eyes. You too can squint at the badly jpeg compressed text served up as a PDF on the race website.
Sunday sees Birmingham’s first half marathon, starting from Perry Barr and winding it’s way through Aston and Newtown, a quick detour up to Bearwood and then finishing in town. Most excitingly they’re getting to run over the overpasses and through the Queensway tunnels, an experience that you would be advised against trying when the roads aren’t specially closed for you. Cool as the tunnel running is, it’s created a hilly course where it would have only naturally had quite gentle slopes. Here comes the pain (>_<) by v1ctory_1s_m1ne on Flickr I don’t understand how the race can be billed as ‘A Race Against Climate Change’, I simply don’t see how it helps in any way. Excpet to get the sponsor’s name next to the words ‘against climate change’ on lots of web pages. If they were that worried they would have insisted on the start of the race being properly accessible by public transport, the Alexander Stadium is on a couple of bus routes (that will be dirverted off the course I assume) but its nearest train station (a couple of miles away) doesn’t have trains at that time on a Sunday morning. That said there’s plenty of fun...