Twelve days to go until the Meadows Marathon 2012

With less than a fortnight until the Meadows Marathon 2012, it's all go at MM HQ and there have been some very exciting developments since the last update.
 
Highland Spring, the UK's leading supplier of bottled water, have donated 2004 litres of their organic bottled water from the Ochil Hills of Perthshire for the Meadows Marathon 2012 participants. The Meadows Marathon team, all of whom are student volunteers, would like to thank Highland Spring for their generous donation, and would like to extend their thanks to the other sponsors of this year's marathon, half-marathon and fun run in Edinburgh's Meadows on Sunday 4th March 2012.
 
Yelp.co.uk have provided runner's wrist bands and prizes for the runner's goodie bags, Bannatyne's Fitness are hosting a warm-up session, Ashley Sports Massage will be on hand to provide massages and Rekorderlig Cider, Wrigley's and the Macdonald Hotel North Berwick have all contributed to this year's prizes and/or on-the-day entertainment. If any other businesses would like to donate a prize, the team would be extremely grateful - please contact [email protected].
 
In other news, there will be a Meadows Marathon promotion push at Edinburgh's Shanghai nightclub on George Street this Wednesday 23rd February. Entry is FREE, as are the goodies given out by the team upon arrival and anyone who quotes 'Meadows Marathon' on the door gets free entry to a raffle which contains two raffle prizes worth £200. Entry is from 10:30pm. Jog on down for a great evening.
 
Even if you don't intend to run, please do come to the event to cheer on the runners and enjoy the open air concert in Bristo Square. You can see the official event page on Facebook here and with up-and-coming acts such as Panda Trap, The Gold Lions, Kung Fu Academy, Tom Vevers, Bwani Junction, Kirsty Keatch, Sam Porter and Edinburgh University Jazz Orchestra all on the bill, we hope you will be entertained immensely.
 
A special mention goes to Norma Prentice, the headteacher of Drummond Community High School, who is training for the London Marathon and is taking a class of girls and training them to run the Race for Life and has also persuaded them to use the Meadows Marathon fun run as a test run. The girls are all from 12-16 and are planning to dress as the Pink Ladies from Grease! Fancy dress is more than welcome - in the past there has been three-legged runners, blindfolded runners, people lugging water barrels - the list goes on. All crazy ideas are considered but must be cleared by the organisers before the day.
 
Thanks go to Peter Craig and Michael Nowicki who have been keeping us (and you!) updated with their training efforts, submitting 'Runner's Diaries' on the Meadows Marathon website, and thanks to STV Local for publishing their updates. You can read the blog entries here. Best of luck to Norma, Peter, Michael and every single person running on the day - it's not too late to get involved...
 
The full marathon is £25 to enter and the half marathon and fun run are £15, with entrants also encouraged to set up Virgin Money Just Giving pages to raise funds for charity. Last year over 800 runners raised nearly £40,000 for a number of different charities based in Edinburgh and beyond. You can sign up and find more inspiration at www.meadowsmarathon.org.uk and don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.