Vienna City Marathon

Vienna provides participants spectacular views from the city. Volunteers and audience were perfect and expo was satisfying to meet runners' demands. However, there are some points must be improved: There was no blue sign along the route to follow best/optimum line which was highly confusing. Block 4 is for those who target to finish 3:50 (5:25-5:30 min/km)- 4:30 marathon (6:20 min/km) was really irrelevant and also for those to finish 1:50-2 hours half marathon. Thus, it was really crowded and making zig-zags among slower runners was annoying. Additionally, start times of marathon and half should be separated to avoid such things.

This was the first marathon with over 10.000 participants (in 42K; 21K and relay). The sanitation measurements were excellent, everybody has to get a negative antigen test 24 hours previous the start to get its bib number. The wide start has plenty of room. The race itself is flat, gorgeous scenery, with water and isotonic stations every 5km or so, they offered you bananas, but no gels, so you must carry yours! The weather was hot (20º-26ºC / 68ª-79ºF) but you get a big glass of non alcoholic wheat beer at the finish line. The medal pretty and golden star with a Swarovski crystal. Not that much crowd as a Major marathon, but there is enough support during the course.

Unfortunately, I just found out that its not possible to pick up your race documents on the day itself. I was planning to travel to Vienna for one day to run the marathon. Unfortunately I will arrive too late to pick up my race documents. I contacted the organisation if they could help me, but they were very unfriendly and unwilling to help. Yes, they can bring the documents to my hotel for an extra charge of 40 euro! They simply forgot that I already payed 100 euro during my registration.