It's that time of the year when strange groups of people start meeting in Mdina car park very early every Sunday morning and quickly take off most of their clothes!

No need to call the Police or be alarmed folks, they're quite harmless. They're marathon runners, you see, and just like ornithologists keep an eye on the sky for the first sighting of some rare bird to detect that spring is coming, so the sight of marathoners in Mdina in November is a sure sign that the Malta Marathon is coming.

Next February 25, 2007, to be exact. At precisely 8 a.m. if you want to be even more exact. And this will be the 22nd annual event.

While we are on the subject of exactitude, in this column over the coming weeks I will be able to do something I have long wished to do, but never got round to.

Thanks to the diligent efforts of Charles Herd (one of the all-timers, that select group of four runners who have taken part in every Malta Marathon), I now have all the results from every Malta Marathon from 1986 to the present day.

This will finally allow me to answer some questions that have always niggled at the back of my mind each year. Questions like; how many people have run the Malta Marathon over the years? How many in the Marathon and how many in the Half? How many of those runners were Maltese? And how many were different Maltese (i.e. counting each runner only once, no matter how many times he/she ran the race)?

I'm still at the data entry point; getting all the years of info into the computer. Then I intend to run it through a database to sort it into useable information.

At present, I am not yet able to answer all the questions I have, but I can answer the first ones.

A total of 12,323 runners have finished either the Malta Marathon or Half Marathon in the years between 1986 and 2006.

That total can be split down into 4,212 finishers in the full marathon, and 8,111 in the half marathon.

1:2 ratio

Those numbers mean that 34 per cent of all finishers completed the full marathon and 66 per cent completed the half marathon: almost an exact 1:2 ratio between full and half.

So far, I am not yet able to state how many were Maltese/foreign, but I hope to be able to answer that question (and others) in the coming weeks.

Of course, I'll also be passing along any news relating to the race, like amendments to the route (none planned so far), and discussing training advice.

We are providing an email address at the bottom of this article, and if you have any questions or suggestions, this is your opportunity to send them. Those that have widespread relevance might be included in future columns.

The recent weeks have offered glorious running weather, with clear blue skies and calm crisp mornings.

Take every advantage of this and get out now and get the miles in the bank. You just know we are going to get our fair share of rainy and windy days between now and the last Sunday in February when (God willing) we'll all meet up on the start-line in Mdina. Until then, enjoy your running.

johnwalsh42195@yahoo.it

John Walsh, an MSc in Sports Physiology and Biomechanics from Edinburgh University.