I'll start with the conclusion - this is an OUTSTANDING race. Definitely lived up to its stellar reputation and what one would expect of a World Marathon Major. Worthy of a place on your race bucket list!

The London Marathon is super hard to get into, and a group of us wanted to travel to London and do the race together, so we all locked in entries by booking through Marathon Tours. This is a fairly expensive option, but overall it was fine and it got us into the race.

We used Marathon Tours' transportation options to get to the start, so I can't comment on standard travel to the race. But I'm told the city does pretty well getting people to the race start.

Speaking of race start - the London Marathon has different starting groups, all beginning in different locations and eventually all converging on the race course about 2-3 miles into the race. I've never started a race like that, and it seemed to go pretty smoothly. We waited in a large athlete area before the start (very similar to athlete's village in Boston).
NOTABLE - they had plastic, fenced-in urinals for guys to use. This allowed a massive amount of people who just had to pee to move through the area quickly without holding up porto-johns for females and guys needing to poo. I really hope races in the US adopt the plastic urinals - brilliant idea, seems to be low cost, and has a HUGE impact on bathroom congestion before the start.

Race started on time and right from the get go, the crowds were just incredible. Constant crowd support for the entire race, with people all drinking outside of pubs and cheering the runners on like crazy. Crowds at London easily rivaled those at Boston, and Boston's friggin' nuts.

Weirdest thing about the London Marathon to me was the aid station/hydration set-up. All water comes in 6-8 oz individual bottles with flip-open sport tops. This made taking water and moving through aid stations SUPER easy (for those of us at the front-ish of the race. I'm told the congestion in the middle and back of the race due to tens of thousands of discarded plastic bottles was SIGNIFICANT). So - this was definitely a treat for me, as I could take and carry water very easily. But the plastic and water waste (from people just taking a sip and discarding the bottle - extremely common) was just incredible.

The sport drink situation was even weirder. Their sport drink was Lucozade, which I got to try at the expo and immediately ruled out drinking on course due to how sweet it was. Just water and two gels for me. But just as with the water, all Lucozade came in bottles with sport tops. But the Lucozade bottles were huge! Each was like a 20 oz bottle!!! That is a ridiculous amount to drink at one time, and 99% of runners I saw and talked to had one sip and threw the rest of the full bottle on the ground. That's a breath-taking amount of waste, and as I said above, it really piled up on people at the back. I'm lucky enough that it didn't affect me, but - wow.

My race went well until mile 18, and as is the norm for me lately, I totally fell off pace and was just dying. I had to dig probably harder than in any other road race to keep going (I haven't wanted to stop and walk so badly in a race before), but I was able to keep going and squeak out a PR. Any PR is definitely a win, but I was about 5 minutes off my goal time so there will ben some training reassessment in my future.

I moved through the finish line very easily, got my SWAG bag (you ONLY get your shirt if you finish, which I kind of liked =D), and a bag just stacked with food, samples, more water and more Lucozade. EXCELLENT swag, and I love that it came in a bag! Hate fumbling with an armful of food right after a race.

Shirt and medal were both excellent - cool Adidas shirt and a very ornate medal. Loved both.

Again, this is a tough Marathon to make happen for non-UK residents, but I was extremely pleased with the race and would HIGHLY recommend to the travel-oriented runner!