Terrible run, terrible time, terrible marathon.

In their wisdom, the Istanbul marathon organisers had the marathon start, the 15km start and the 10km start, all at the same time. This was a nonsense decision as the running pace of the three groups was different and this led to some congestion at the start and worse, a lot of jostling for the first few kilometres.

The Istanbul marathons USP is that you run from Asia to Europe across one of the iconic Istanbul bridges. However the crossing was spoiled for me by whole families who got in the way whilst taking photos... not of the runners but of themselves on the bridge. Then calamity of calamities the worst happened.... As I finished crossing the bridge there was a little congestion and the runner in front of me accidentally stepped on a dead cat that hadn't been bothered to be cleared away. He squashed the unfortunate animal which then exploded, leaving me with dead 'cat juice' all over my left (new) running shoe. I ran the next 14km in shock and with a wet left foot.

I had already made the rookie mistake of starting off at too fast a pace, it may have been in part due to a conversation with my brother-in-law who insisted that he could run 15km in 45 mins (he would have finished 5th), or maybe just because I was an idiot.

The climb after crossing the bridge was a killer, worse was to follow on the run down to the sea on Barbarous Blv. You would think it would be faster and easier to run downhill, but its the most stressful thing you can do to your knees.

The rest of the run was pretty much flat and after crossing Galata Bridge, very unexciting.

I was running fine till I got to 12km, then my earlier excertions and wet foot caught up with me and I slowed right down.

I had originally planned to run the marathon, but I managed to fracture my arm in the early summer and it ruined my training regime so I decided to enter the 15km as a hedge. I am so glad I did. The marathon route is terrible, and the organisation, worse. As for spectators? London gets between 500,000 to 1,000,000 spectators for its marathon every year. If I say I saw 2000 on Sunday then I might be exaggerating a bit.

At the beginning of the day I was envious of the marathon runners and looking down at the 10km runners. At the end I was feeling sorry for the marathon runners and envious of the 10km runners - they only needed to run the sexisest part of the course.

If it was up to me I would change the route and and make the whole event more like a party. Till that happens I think I'll be sticking to the 10 / 15km run and running marathons in London. Roll on April.