If you examine the map above you’ll notice two things about this year’s Great Scottish Run:

First, you’ll notice the route is largely out and back with a large section using the same roads.

Second, you’ll notice most of the route avoids nearly evert park, tree or hint of a plant in the Southside in Glasgow, which is quite an achievement. Glasgow is know as the ‘Dear Green Place’. It has more than 90 parks and gardens. It has beautiful tree lined streets, particularly in the Southside and, yet, the Great Scottish Run chooses to run through some of the most deprived areas and avoid anything which makes Glasgow nice (unless you’re a Rangers fan and love to see a glimpse of Ibrox stadium).

It even finishes in Glasgow Green, one of Glasgow’s biggest parks. But it only uses a few hundred metres as a dash to the finish line. Can they not use more of it? Would you hire a Ferrari to just use it to park it in a Park? Of course not, so why run the Great Scottish Run and not use the very things that make running in Glasgow great.

Great Scottish Run, more like okayish Scottish Run.

At least this year, the route was the correct distance after previous races has seen record had to be scrubbed as the official distance turned out to be less than 13.1 miles. But to do that, they’ve had to add in a 50m detour down a road and then back up again. They couldn’t even add 100m in Glasgow Green. Instead we a Ferrari and a quick spin up to the next level in QPark.

Saying all that, and trying not to be too grumpy, the race is very well organised with groups released in waves to help spread people around the course. There’s three water stops and the route is almost flat.

But if you want to see a tree, try another race. Or try my race. Instead of running around the Southside, howabout running from George Square to Kelvingrove Park, then to the university, the Kelvin walkway, the Botanic Gardens, Great Western Road, Hyndland and Clarence Drive, over to Victoria Park, before back down Dumbarton Road, the banks of the Clyde and longer run through Glasgow Green. Easy.