Presumably the city council will update their own site soon but it’s worth noting that this year’s Birmingham half-marathon on October 11th is also the world half-marathon championships. That means us casual Brummie runners will be racing with the world’s elite.
The IAAF page on the event is quite illuminating. From it you can glean that the elite women will start separately from the men at 9am with the men (and probably the rest of the field) starting at 9.30am. No word on whether the route will change but you do learn that top prize is $30,000 (puts my £30 to shame) and that “the payment of prize money is dependent upon the athletes clearing the usual anti-doping procedures.” I best leave my steroid-based asthma inhalers at home then.
The IAAF do a nice little descriptor of Brum: “This city has been the industrial heartland of the country; it is still important industrially but this has also made way for an increasingly high position in the service sector.” Yep – about sums it up. Of course I’m still hoping my prediction for Paula Radcliffe to run it as a warm-up for the New York marathon comes true but most of all I hope it’s as good a race this year as it was last time around.
(nice pic from Flickr by hartlandmartin. Note Bournville Harriers’ star female athlete Linda keeping those guys on their toes)
Hi Dave
What a small world – I was looking up the date of this year’s Brum 1/2 and google threw me directly to your website! Hope all’s well – were you not due to run London yesterday? I’m very pleased to have sampled the experience but twas just too hot!
See you soon
Mike scotney
Edinburgh for me mate, last weekend in May. Enjoyed your report over at the BVH site. Seems a few struggled towards the end – some great times though.
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Hi Dave
Funny that, like Mike,I was also checking out the date for the Bham half on google and there you popped up.
Good to catch up with you yesterday and look forward to running with you in Edinburgh.
James
i was looking for porn. God knows how i ended up here?
Yes – for some reason at the moment there are tons of people searching for ‘Birmingham half marathon’ and I appear high up in the search. I knew you lot would find me out eventually. Long may it continue though – at last I have people reading this flipping blog…
Am I being stupid? How do I enter the race?!!! I can only find stuff for 2008…
Can you point me in the right direction please?
Hi Sarah,
Entries aren’t open yet. It’s just a matter of keeping an eye out on the official website: http://www.birminghamhalfmarathon.com/
Last year entries opened in early June.
The official website has now said you can register for an email reminder to notify you when entries are open for 11 October.
Hi Dave
The website has been launched now and applications open, but the route is quite a rough sketch. Looks good though, see you there
http://www.birminghamhalfmarathon.com/
Pete
Can’t wait til the race tomorrow now, however is a shame that Paula Radcliffe can’t make it. Good luck everyone…
Dave
I experienced my first half marathon yesterday in Birmingham and thoroughly enjoyed it. I have looked at the results on the website and am a little confused as to why the finishing positions seem to be based on the clock times and not the chip times.
Surely the clock times have no real relevance to finishing positions and if the effort to give people accurate finishing times via the chip which is great then this time should be used for finishing positions.
It is presumably possible to sort and display position by chip times.
or is there some perfectly good reason to list by clock times that I am obviously missing.
Tony
Birmingham half marathon was my first ever social running event.
What a great experience, the route was good, vocal support was superb and I even was grateful for the cool damp conditions.
What a buzz running down the middle of Broad street with all them spectators willing us on.
My knees are still aching but already want to do it again.