Doesn't it seem every town and city now has to have an 'annual' marathon of some sort or another which, like Brighton recently, bring chaos to the roads.

Payback time in Wrexham .

- but good on those who made sure they didn't take the shortcut.

see the bbc

Extract:


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Chaos as Village Bakery Half Marathon road signs changed
21 February 12 13:22


Race organisers have apologised after about 40 half-marathon runners were sent in the wrong direction when pranksters changed signs on the route.

The first people to finish the Village Bakery Half Marathon in Wrexham ran a route about two miles (3.2k) too short.

The problem came to light when the lead car spotted that signs were altered. They were corrected but not before some runners appeared in front of the car.

Wrexham Athletics Club says it and the runners have been left disappointed.

'Annoyed and frustrated'

"We have had problems in the past with the weather, but nothing like this," said Bob Frost, secretary at Wrexham Athletics Club, which organised Sunday's race.

It is not known who changed the signs, but it is thought to have happened twice during the 17th annual race, which had 470 entrants.

The athletics club says one helper, Peter Norman, was up at first light checking and marking out the course, as always on race day.

"You can imagine his surprise when driving the lead car he saw one of his signs pointing the wrong way," said a statement on the club website.

"Peter at this point corrected the sign. You can further imagine his horror when further around the course he caught up with runners who he knew should be behind him.

"It is evident that immediately after Peter had corrected the direction sign someone with malicious intent had for a second time changed it."

The athletics club has published results of the finishing line places and, as runners usually monitor their own run times, it is asking any who thinks they did not run the whole course - because their times were quicker than expected - to get in touch.

Among the competitors was Arwel Lewis, road secretary of Eryri Harriers and a member of the Welsh Athletics road racing committee.

He said he had never experienced someone changing signs on a race route in more than 1,000 competitive races.

Like some other athletes, Mr Lewis realised he had taken a wrong route when he checked his own time and went back to find the correct route, adding to his race finish time and total distance completed.

This is just a nasty thing to do really. A lot of my family are runners and I know how much their times mean to them. It just goes to show the idiocy of people that they can't put up with one day of disruption. And before anyone says anything I have first hand experience- I've been a marshall at many running events.

Would this kind of thing be possible with most marathons though? .... arn't the routes well signed with temp signage and shouldn't most of the route be marshalled?

I mark up courses for horse endurance races.

These take place on public bridlepaths with landowners permission. The landowners also gives permission to my colleagues and I to ride our Trail Motorcycles around the course to mark it up, we do this on a voluntary basis.

Thing is we have to check the course before and during the event as, invariably, some that don't like to share the countryside tamper with the signs.

After the event we always remove the markers.

I'm a 'victim' of the Great North Run, as I live north of the Felling Bypass and west of the A194 which form part of the route.

This means that the part of Gateshead and South Tyneside I live in is practically sealed off from the outside world for traffic. The only exception is access to the A19 at Jarrow, immediately next to the Tyne Tunnel and local junction with the A19 south of the Lindisfarne Roundabout.

Trying to use these routes is a nightmare as you can imagine, as local traffic trying to get anywhere is funnelled to these two points. I think these are the only way for traffic also to get out of the part of South Shields that lies north of the Great North Run route as well, so you can imagine the chaos.

If i'm planning to travel that day, if I don't plan to leave early, I normally drive the car and park in a quiet housing estate on the other side of the Felling Bypass first thing in the morning before the roads are closed. Its a 20 minute walk but that still saves a lot more time compared to sitting in queues, and its an excuse for some exercise. Given it only takes place one day of the year, I've learned to live with it and the tactic I use avoids the problem of being hemmed in all day.

We've gained an annual cycle race in town, it uses a straightforward lap that is no more than 3 left turns forming a triangle that contains a church, historic hall and a few houses. Last summer the race coincided with a large fete at the hall, trouble was the hall was effectively cut off from all it's potential customers by the cycle race which left the organisers confused by each others' presence and visitors & stallholders at the fete annoyed by all the diversion and road closed signs right at the point they were trying to access. The racers were mostly happy but they did have dodge pedestrians who had to cross the course to access the hall & its well used grounds.
Hopefully this year they'll avoid a clash.

Depends. Many rely on volunteers and are therefore sometimes short of marshalls.

Stories a little while back of cars being towed away from marathon routes after giving their owners less than 2 weeks notice - which is no good if you are on holiday. The most annoying thing them being charged several hundred pounds to get it back.

Birmingham, being the big city that it is, has attracted the attention of numerous events that close roads. There is the obligatory half-marathon, there is a cycle race, there is the annual St Paddy's day parade along Digbeth, and of course any party conference that comes to the ICC results in a security cordon around the area.

My gripe with this is that the chosen day for these events is always Sunday (the conferences always span a weekend as well), and my orchestra rehearses in a central Birmingham location on a Sunday morning. The courses for the races almost always pass the Town Hall, so Paradise Circus is closed, along with many nearby streets.

We cope, just about, but people with large instruments - cellos, basses, heavy brass - don't half bellyache about the extra walking distance. and with good reason (I've had to carry my daughter's cello, and it's an awkward beast to manage).

But surely it's better on a Sunday when few people do anything than another day when more people do stuff? People are bound to be inconvenienced whichever day it is held, best Sunday when the inconvenience can be minimised.

I would certainly be very annoyed if that happened to me. The events are portrayed as raising money for charity and for amateur runners but the bigger events also have effectively professional athletes taking part and earning large sums of money. The events are also usually sponsored so they are advertising events for commercial companies.

If they need to move vehicles then that should be paid by the sponsors and not used as yet another way to make money out of drivers. I remember reading about the case mentioned, many innocent motorists were caught out by very heavy handed towing away and issuing of penalties charges.

That may well be true, but you forget that the London Marathon is the largest annual fundraising event in the world. It raises a vast amount of money for good causes.

But the fact that something is for charidee doesn't justify riding roughshod over people's rights.

And, given that we are increasingly becoming a 7-day economy, perhaps we need to look again at disruptive large-scale road closures that may have been acceptable thirty years ago.

'roughshod over people's rights' my arse. You lose the right to travel on certain roads for at very most a few days per year. Hardly a fundamental human necessity is it?

Anyway, if these people were so bothered they'd object in the proper and correct way to the notice about the road closures in the back of their local newspaper.

Your car gets towed away because you didn't realise it was happening? On holiday, fine, a stroke of bad luck. Everyone has these now and then. Maybe it wouldn't be unfeasible to warn people longer in advance, but how long do you want? People take long holidays to go on cruises. No matter the length of time selfish idiots will still carp and complain and moan and think just because they've been slightly inconvenienced the sky is falling in. And anyway, surely they'd know something was going on and then take steps to find out about it.

And what of the economic benefits of these events? Millions raised for charity, thousands of runners descend. These stay in hotels, use local shops and generally contribute to the local economy in general. Sponsorship deals will also attract new custom to businesses (local or national depending on the scale of the event).

I can't believe that any large scale event requring multiple road closures will give only two weeks of public notice. Yes, people along the route may get final reminders two weeks before the event, but taking the Great North as an example, the route pretty much never changes, and the date is known over a year in advance, so there isn't really much excuse. Any larger event will have their own websites (so if you don't know the route or date of, for example, the Cardiff Half Marathon, then you can go and look it up easily), and smaller events won't usually require the route to be completely cleared or even closed at all. The regular event in this part of the world is the Tour of Britain, which went to Barnstaple a couple of years back. Signs went up a couple of weeks in advance, and only one all-day road closure was needed (at the Square, which is regularly closed for big events anyway). But every other road was kept open for the duration - the cyclists obviously had a police escort who went ahead to stop traffic, along with marshalls who would wave warning flags in front of obsticles such as traffic islands and parked cars. It worked really well.

I doubt this was a protest against the marathon, more someone playing silly buggers. A more effective protest against a marathon would be to block the route with a badly parked car.

Which would be removed, or runners would, shock horror, run around, depending on the scale of the event.

And somewhat easier to trace the offender.

Having said that we should not discount the possibility that it was the work of a malicious vandal rather than an anti-marathon campaigner.

Or just some 9 year olds having a laugh. Doesn't seem the crime of the century TBH.

That was my point.