Yesterday morning I took part in the Reading Half Marathon. Safely ensconced back home, you may be blissfully unaware of this event, which wormed its way through the university campus. We entered via the Pepper Lane entrance, took a right through the various science buildings, then back up between Park House and Chemistry past Maths and taking a left just behind the Library up the hill, then a right and out via The Queen’s Drive. If you run, you should certainly consider the Reading Half Marathon before you leave the university.

Picture found online of runners running very close to the economics department during the half marathon

But what is a Half Marathon? It’s a LOT of people (estimates at around 16,000) running a relatively LONG way (13.1 miles, or 21.2 kilometers). It’s thus a huge logistical exercise, with many road closures all around the town, a huge number of volunteers to set up the facilities at the start and finish (lots of portaloos, and also dotted around the course). It’s also a great opportunity for sponsorship, with Garmin’s name dotted all over various parts of the course, and Lucozade handing out hundreds of thousands of bottles at numerous drinks stops around the course. Buses diverted from their usual Sunday morning activities to shuttle thousands of runners from the railway station and other focal points to the race start/finish, and so on. Photographers dotted around the route trying to get the best photos in order to convince runners to buy pictures of themselves, organisers handing out free T-shirts to “Finishers” replete with sponsoring company names, and the organisers trying to sell additional “technical” shirts sufficiently attractively that people part with their cash for them (I didn’t).

It’s thus a huge event, and occurs once a year during the Easter vacation. Other colleagues have run the race in the past, as have students. Did you? Is it macroeconomic? It’s hard to argue given the vast number of different markets referred to in the last paragraph that it’s microeconomic – there are huge co-ordination issues between these various different markets that come together each year for the event. But even though it’s macroeconomic, can we really learn anything that might help us to think about the things we learnt on Intro Macro last term?