Green-Red-White

Or is it White-Green-Red? The Treviso Marathon had this idea that they would have three separate starts for their marathon and assign a colour of the national flag to each one. At the half way point the three roads would meet and, having supplied a appropriate coloured hat, they would form the Italian National flag. It was really complicated to plan everything, but in the end it all worked out. I put just one pacer from each start point and coordinated it so that they would meet up with one another at 21km. THAT worked too (amazing!). It was actually very emotional, lots of tears were shed. The picture here is of the three 4h15' pacers. The guy in red was sobbing uncontrollably at the finish line.
One of the women I train, Alessia, ran her first marathon there. She wrote a nice story about it (sorry, in Italian!), though there is one excerpt I thought was funny: "While I was at the start sitting on the ground so I could take off my long pants and hide the gels, tie my shoes, I start a conversation with a couple. They're nice. I tell them this is my first marathon. 'Really? Good luck!' Then they see I have the blue bracelet to follow the four hour pacers and they ask me how many long runs I did. "15 miles" I tell them. They look at me shocked and then say "and you want to follow the four hour pacers?? Are you crazy? 15 miles is not enough, you'll never make it!"

Apart from the fact that this is the rudest thing to say to ANYBODY at the start of their first marathon...The long slow run is a useless exercise. Her 3h58'31" finishing time with negative splits proves it! Plus, she doesn't even look tired at the finish line...