The 2015 Malta Marathon will be the 30th running of this ever growing race.

As the applications keep on coming in at a steady flow, it is quite evident that the next race will be celebrated with a record number of participants.

The foreign applications are already well past the number received at the same time last year and as regards Maltese participation there is also a slight increase.

Interestingly, French veteran Raymond Vignier will be doing the half marathon for the fourth consecutive time.

He was 86 when he did his first Malta Half Marathon and his target time for the 2015 race is 2 hours and 45 minutes. I hope that he will be an inspiration to many other runners of all ages.

The Malta Marathon Organising Committee not only tries to raise the standard of the Malta Marathon by introducing new incentives but we also try to improve certain aspects of the race which are already in place.

This year we will be focusing on race registration – we will be introducing a new system by which the collection of race packs at registration will be faster – and clothes bags as we have teamed up with DHL who have become our logistics partners.

In fact, we are working on a different way of handling the collection of clothes bags at the finish.

We will be trying out the new additions in the forthcoming Mdina 2 Spinola Christmas Road Race.

This is not all, we know that some of the faster full marathon participants are facing congestion as they exit Ta’ Qali at the 26th kilometre stage when they meet up with the slower half marathon participants and the walkers.

To allow faster runners to get ahead of the others before the narrow roads of Attard, we shall be starting the full marathon at 7.30am instead of the usual 8am.

There are other benefits to this earlier start, the marathon runners will meet less congestion and roads in parts of Attard, Lija, Mosta and Ta’ Qali will be totally open to traffic earlier, causing less inconvenience to motorists.

I have heard mixed feelings as regards to last year’s introduction of the Mrieħel Industrial Estate in our route.

This was mostly related to traffic management as the half marathon is now out of Rabat earlier and that helps us reduce the time when traffic stalls completely near the Mtarfa Military Cemetery.

Also, the half marathon avoids Ta’ Qali and the ‘famous’ waterlogged part of the route completely.

With regards to the full marathon we have avoided some of the twists and turns in Attard.

The Mrieħel Industrial Estate area is relatively traffic-free on Sundays. So to help lift the runners’ spirits on race day we are planning to introduce at least one band in that location.

With the cooperation of all we shall be trying once again to convince the slower runners and walkers to start behind the faster ones in the race as we heard quite a number of complaints related to this matter.

Meanwhile, applications for the Mdina 2 Spinola race (December 21) are open.

The early bird reduced application fee will only be available until tomorrow so if you haven’t applied yet then do so now by going to www.maltamarathon.com/application_forms.htm in order to take advantage of the reduced rate.

Walkers good enough to cover the half marathon in three hours may also apply for the Christmas race as this would be equivalent to the 2 hours 30 minutes maximum time limit that the M2S has.