7. Night marathon 2016. report

Impressions take some time when you make something this big and the hype about it gets huge. 7. Night marathon was huge for both runners and us!

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We invested a lot of effort to fullfill the expectations, because we were the ones who raised the bar. Praisal and critique are just one of the signs we are on the right track.

We invested a lot of effort in our new design. The Night marathon got its own web site, we have new illustration for the t-shirt and finisher medal. Since the marathon already had awesome implementation the years before, this was just a cherry on top of this sweet cake 🙂

We had to decline registration on the race day for this year. That was largely unpopular, but necessary. We also had to limit the halfmarathon to 1000 runners, because we reached current course capacity. The other reason for this limitations is race center optimization. Everything runs more smoothly when runners just have to pick up their starter kits 😉7nm_trka_takmičarski_centar

The Night marathon raises the bar for event organization in Serbia since its inception. This years innovation is eDiploma, which is shareable on soicial networks 🙂

Starter kits pick up ran flawless, while the sun was unforgiving. Our crew was sweating under the white tents, which didn’t offer much of protection, but we didn’t have much time to notice from all the work. During the starter kits pick up, the local crew was playing basketball and our friends and partners made a small expo around the court.

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This Night marathon had also sort of humanitarian form. The Trči ŽiviZdravo team have sold every kilometer they ran, and gathered 96.700 dinars for the special school “Veljko Ramadanović” for students with damaged sight, from Zemun, Serbia.

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The largest visitors group this year was from Sarajevo, BiH – NGO Sarajevo polumaraton, great 110 strong! For that reason we asked Nudžejmu Softić from this organization to present their cause briefly, tell us why they came to Novi Sad and open the 7. Night marathon officially. Not long after the Minimarathon started.

After the Minimarathon ended the night has fallen, we held the Minimarathon winners ceremony and Halfmarathon and Marathon warmup started. From the stage the JeuNS band was sweetening the atmosphere and we could feel more electricity in the air as every second passed. The waredrobe was full, and race center was closed.

The drone was buzzing in the air abowe the runners’ heads when everybody was ready to start. In the relatively small start zone were more than 1000 halfmarathon and marathon runners. In the meantime the Sambansa group started to hit their drums while the crowd cheered! The speaker had counted down until the start and the runners river went off!

The finisher medas waited ready at the finish line, while the finish refreshment stand was getting ready. Our aunt Rada, aunt Borjanka and Tijana Đaić were baking “bakin kolač” (lokal kind of waffles) on sight, and the smell had spread across the field. It is unclear how runners managed to stay on course with that kind of distraction 🙂 The event went smoothely although few runners had to seek the medical help, probably due to dehidratation and heat.

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The finish refreshment stand was tireless! Despite minor menu changes nobody was left hungry or thirsty!

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For results was responsible Hronometar Timing. The timing system did well considering conditions. The transponders were completelly soaked in water and sweat, which is suboptimal, but that didn’t prevent us to publish the results on the Race center (trka.rs) before the event had ended.

Many thanks to our friends

Mivela took care about water on the refreshment stands, winner prizes and finish isotonic was sponsored by Pansport and Bioland did the same with their delicious and healthy biscuits. Novi Sad fair loaned us their fences, Enter ITS provided hosting for the website, Invictabike Team was leading the fastest runners and many thanks to all other friends for their help to achieve such a success on the 7. Night marathon.
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Some stats

We had in total 1501 runners from 21 countries, from which there were 1290 finishers. It is not the first time that the Night marathon was underestimated because of the cozy atmosphere, although we try to make people aware, that conditions are not usual, which makes this event more challenging than it would be obvious 😉

Bosnia and Hercegovina surprised us with huge 248 runners! As usual, the Night marathon was dominated by Ex Yu countries, and besides them, there were Hungary, Italy, Russia and Poland among other worth of mentioning.

We are also happy to announce that there are mor female runners each year! We had 39% ladies and 61% gentleman.Imali smo 7 takmičara starijih od 65 godina i jednog mlađeg od 9 godina.

The vast majority of the runners were between 25 and 35 years of age with their 47%, but that doesn’t exclude the others, who were fairly evenly distributed. The Night marathon is for all, young and old 😉

Results

The results were published during the event night on trka.rs.

logotip - trka - pozitivIn case of irregularities concerning results write on the address: rezultati@nocnimaraton.rs.

Winners

Although the Night marathon is not an event reserved for elite, it is a competition after all and we want to congratulate the winners the most cencirelly, for acheiving respectable results in this unusual conditions. The fact, that they did it without promise of money prize makes their victory more valuable, because they ran with all of their hearts.

MARATHON

Women

  1. Nora Trklja 3:11:11 (second in absolute rank)
  2. Biljana Bursać 3:28:32
  3. Danijela Cvetković 3:37:26

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Men

  1. Mladen Stevanović 2:56:27
  2. Zoran Radičanin 3:20:21
  3. Goran Vendlener 3:26:36

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HALFMARATHON

Women

  1. Danijela Kuna 1:23:49 (course record)
  2. Jelena Kosić 1:32:01
  3. Emira Hukić 1:34:39

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Men

  1. Aleksandar Adžić 1:18:58
  2. Darko Pleh 1:22:30
  3. Marko Medojević 1:23:16

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MINIMARATHON

Women

  1. Marija Panić 0:33:47
  2. Mirjana Topić 0:34:37
  3. Almina Haskić 0:34:41

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Men

  1. Marko Zetović 0:24:51
  2. Andrija Đorđević 0:25:27 (member of ARK Fruška gora, our club :))
  3. Michal Szymel 0:26:12

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After the marathon

After this kind of events comes less know and less popular part of work: cleaning up. Hard working team spread acros the field and course, gathered the garbage, and pieled the banana piel from the tartan track for hours. Until the morning we swept and sanitized everything so that one would hardly tell that just few hours ago there was the biggest running party in this part of the world 🙂

How do you clean confetti without a broom? The picture is worth a 1000 words 🙂

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Hold on, the 8. Night marathon is coming! Save the date: 24.6.2017. This photo will go to history (marathon aftermath with the gulash our mr. president had cooked):

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The end! See you next year 🙂

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