AIBU to be fucked off at road marathons?

Cheers. I will let my autistic daughter know that she should be delighted to sit in the house all day so that Whitbread corporation and charities will do well out of it. I will tell her to think of the greater good. Very glad we got your tuppence worth.

Wtf? If people object to being hemmed in then they must be responsible for antisocial and behaviour? They are clearly impeding the emergency services? Do you not realise how ridiculous you sound?

I imagine this is the equation that councils and organisers are trying to balance

Amount of money(profit) for organisers
Amount of money raised for charity
Amount of money spent on local hotels/businesses/parking etc
Potentially publicity for the area

Versus
Negative impact on residents (and to be fair a lot of people might not know how or who to complain to, so the council/organisers might receive eg 50 complaints when in fact the number of people negatively impacted might have been a lot higher)

The Manchester Marathon has raised over £3.5 million allocated to charities such as Alzheimer’s Charity, Cancer Research UK, British Heart Foundation and The Christie and this year provisional economic spend in the city amounted to £29.2 million.
The bastards.

@sharpclawedkitten Road races. Manchester Marathon and Altrincham 10k. Both times the closed roads completely encircle our area so we are literally blocked for the duration.

How many races were there in the past few weeks? Or do you mean roadworks which seem to be plaguing most of the country at the moment.

Fair enough, I don't live there and I don't know how much of a pain it is. We have a local 10k soon and I am just waiting for all the moaning to start for the 90 minutes of possible inconvenience!

I'm not sure it's just a minority who park on pavements, but that's for another thread!

Exactly this!

It probably took a huge team a considerable period of time to establish a route plus risks/impacts/analysis etc.

Yeah I get it’s probably a logistical nightmare which is highly complex. And if I had to organise the thing I would probably think it made sense to put it around the same route.

Just coming back to this after helping at my local parkrun yesterday.

Some suggestions have been that people should use trail or parks and run loops. After 1 parkrun (of 300 people) yesterday the ground was fairly churned up, the route is 3 loops of approx 1 mile. I can't imagine what it would have looked like after 23 more!! One of the volunteers was saying we might need to be creative with the course to protect the ground. Other parkruns have been closed by the woodland trust for damage to the paths/ground, and 2 xc races last year were cancelled - one due to the ground being a site of historically interest and the other for conservation reasons.....so the fewer choices that are available, the bigger the races (usually bigger, expensive races) that are able to go ahead, become, if that makes sense? The great south run was cancelled today so that might be a relief for anyone who would have been negatively impacted.

I'm not saying it's OK that people feel trapped in their houses, or can't have their care needs attended, but trying to explain how it's not as easy to just say you can run round a field.

@NotAnotherCodeBlueAt3Am - you'll be pleased to hear that Mcr marathon have announced today that the finish will no longer be at Old Trafford, but will be in the city centre instead. So I guess they'll be able to open the Trafford roads much earlier. The full route hasn't been published yet, but it will probably be good news for you.

A pain in the neck. Had to stay home all day with disabled family members.

How did you find Manchester Half today?

Most probably. Been driving for many years and I don’t do any of these things! I doubt it’s more than a minority that do, but they obviously have a noticeable impact.

We have the Oxford Half Marathon this weekend and I'm just hoping that they don't have the band playing that they've had in previous years that only seems to know 3 songs that they play for 2 or 3 hours on a loop! It's loud, pretty much outside our block of flats and ruins our Sunday morning!
To be fair to the organisers, they've got it pretty sorted over the past few years with the speed that they lay out the course and clear it afterwards, so the thing is over by about 1pm, it's just the band playing music that I really see no need for! It's loud and intrusive.

Which is right an proper, of course. Why waste time on people who can't walk ?

Oh, they do.

They just don't care.

I agree, for people with mobility issues it is not right if you can't even access the pavement outside your own home, but i was directing it more at people with no mobility issues.

Yeah people never think what it's like to navigate the world in a wheelchair

Not in a wheelchair.

We are surrounded every year for a local 10k.

We were very upset this year because MIL had been rushed to A&E a few times in the previous weeks. The blooming road closures blocked us from going to her care home or the hospital.

The motorists expressing such deep concern here for the emergency services and for the plight of the old and the vulnerable must be totally different motorists to the ones that routinely block the access of fire engines and ambulances and obstruct roads, pavements, dropped kerbs, cycle lanes etc with their dangerous driving and selfish parking.

I am too. Very very annoying!!