Ian Danby's Staging Area

Prior to the event itself, communication was excellent and very professional.
When it came to practicalities, it was completely shambolic.
At the bib pick up there were far too few people on site to help organise the queues – 100’s were slowly baked in the courtyard waiting to go through and get the t-shirt.
Race day started badly when the trains were absolutely jam packed full of people and there were no officials to explain whether or not more trains would come and at what time. I think that was the first occasion when I thought somebody could easily get hurt.
Then at reaching the starting train station, the crowds were equally as bad and no direction or announcements whatsoever in terms of where to go, how much time etc. This was the second occasion when people coudl easilly get hurt as the crowd to go down in to the station was huge and equally to come out of the exit at the other side.
I was gobsmacked that the organisers had not made use of the PA system at the station to move people on.
At this point I can’t remember seeing any representative of the race. Just police officers with seemingly no idea of what they should be doing.
The next big crush was ‘security’ – nowhere near enough people to handle the participants – yet another disaster waiting to happen.
Then trying to get in to the correct starting position was impossible and no help from the officers, no announcements, nothing!
I reached the start point some 20 minutes after the race had actually started.
The course is straight forward enough and the drinks/food was great although the advance signage of that could be better.
The roads had plenty of potholes (not unusual these days) but maybe some effort could have been made to fill them with sand or paint rings round them.
Many many people were passing out due to heat exhaustion not helped by the amount of time they had spent in a crowded train, station and then trying to get to the start.
The race route was pretty narrow and very difficult to make progress because the paces of all runners was mixed up.
Then at the finish it was (have a guess) yet another huge squeeze to get the finishers through.
On the plus side, the citizens are very helpful and Lisbon itself really is worth the visit. Just a real shame that whoever organised the physical logistics didn’t do enough.