Carrie Paxson's Staging Area

we were on a bridge for 2 hours waiting for the marathon to start. No bathrooms, no services. Then, there were no bathrooms until 6 km. For the first 3 hours of my day, I watched men, women, old, young, have no choice but to release their bowels over the bridge, on the bridge, where people were standing, in ditches, on the side of the road like animals. The marathon started one hour late because of the hurricane, so I can imagine that created logistical challenges, but they were tearing down the track after the turnoff of the mini marathon, so there was no signage after that, and a cop on our tail pressuring to pull us off. We came as a group from Canada and had lengthy discussions about finishing under 4 hours, and were assured that we had the time, since we are a walking group. I loved Lisbon and Cascais as a destination, but this was a terrible experience. We could have gone anywhere. All the organizers needed to tell us is that they didn’t take walkers over 3 hours. That was not what we were told. 4 of us travelled from Canada and 3 of us were pulled off.