@okwithmydecay totally agree with this. The big marathons are luxury goods. I guess there are some people who can't bring themselves to wear anything but designer labels, but the rest of us are just happy to be clothed. When you complete a marathon, the achievement is yours forever. This is true if it's a local marathon with a few hundred runners or World Major with tens of thousands. Would be great to have more "middle" events IMO.

@okwithmydecay nice piece. I would dearly love to run a sub-3 marathon. I've consistently underperformed at that distance sadly. The "fun" is in keeping on trying though...