🐴 New Forest Marathon Water Stations and Advice 🐾

Water Station Update and Advice

The summer has finally arrived and we've been receiving many emails about water around the course so here's the information you need and our advice to runners.

2023 presents a slightly different challenge to other years. This is because we've have very few hot days this summer to train in, therefore runners may not have had a chance to get use to running in the warm conditions we've seen over the last few days. Sunday's forecast looks lovely, slightly cooler with some cloud cover. (but we all know how accurate the forecast can be!)

What have NFM done to prepare for a hot race?
We have 8 water stations around the course, supported by the brilliant team at Bournemouth Water. We've doubled the water supply on our busiest drinks station to ensure there is plenty of supply when you reach the station. We've also been in touch with our nutrition partner High5 who have supplied 20 water barrels which can be transported around the course to support any drink station. On the Full Marathon course we've added an extra support station on mile 21.5 too. All drink station information can be found on our website by clicking on the link button below.
We have several clearly signed water points in the Race Village where you can refill a bottle/cup as many times as you like for free before or after the race. These will be available all day to ensure runners and spectators can fully hydrate. We have water and High5 Zero electrolyte dissolvable tablets on the finish line too, to help you fully recover after your run. We always have a stack of bananas too, which help post run recovery! You can read more about the power of bananas here

Our advice to runners
To be fully prepared for the race we advise runners to run with their own supply of water. This way you can be sure to have it to hand between drink stations if or when you need it. Of course you can refill your own bottle at drink stations, however this may take time if several others are doing the same. So our advice here is to take a pre filled cup from one of the volunteers and pour this into your container rather than wait for it to be refilled.

Why do we have cups and not bottles?
The New Forest is a unique place to run, so we look at all measures to ensure the event has no impact on the surrounding habitat. The event was names as a UK model of best practice by the Environment Agency for these measures. This includes using cardboard cups rather than bottles at drink stations, using energy drink rather than gels and having rubbish drop zones to ensure no rubbish is dropped between stations.