Staggering numbers at GC marathon

Chris Sanson competed in the Gold Coast Airport marathon last week, but I didn’t appreciate the size of the event until I saw one of the Gold Coast newspaper print out of the results of all finishers.

In the marathon, the list ran to 5211 finishers.

The first male took 2 hours 8 minutes 39 seconds to complete the journey, with the first women taking 2 hours 25min 34sec. The last finisher took 6hr 48min.

Sanson finished 36th in 2 hours 33 minutes 8 seconds.

There were even bigger entries in the half marathon, with 7109 finishers, with the completion time ranging from the winning 1hr 3min 14sec to the slowest 2hr 39min 40sec.

In the 10km race 4452 finished, again with an enormous time difference.

The winner took just under 30 minutes, while the last competitor took 3 hours 12 seconds.

The numbers continued to amaze, as the 5.7km run had 3037 finishers.

The 4km childrens event had 419 finishers and the 2km race for under 10s had 845.

That’s an awfully large number of competitors to be gathered in one place.

I don’t know what the entry fee was, but going by the fees charged for New Zealand events, the take in would be staggering.

I came across some interesting figures from this event.

This year’s entrants consumed 15,0000 litres of water, 2 tonnes of bananas, 27 tonnes of oranges and 560kg of kiwifruit.

There was more than 2 tonnes of discarded warm up gear, most retrieved and this ends up being donated to local charities.

Another interesting fact was that to mark the course, they used 3250 orange safety cones, with 5000 cable ties.

This Saturday the Wanganui Harrier Club will host the Athletics Manawatuwanganui cross-country championships, while on Sunday the second round of the winter track and field series is in Masterton.