If you’re getting ready for Run Norwich on Sunday then good luck with your final preparations!

I’ve picked up my race pack – though I can’t believe I forgot to order a new running shirt when I signed up, so may be I can pick up another, if I get a chance.

While I was outside the Forum, I met Nicola Cage, pictured above, at the impressive looking marathonmaps stand. Nicola is from Norwich and turns out the business marathonmaps.co.uk is a start-up, which she launched earlier this year with the help of her brother Matthew.

Basically, with marathonmaps you can order a personalised poster map of the Run Norwich route with your name and race time on it.

I always like to find out about new businesses and the stories behind them, so I asked her about it (apologies I didn’t have a reporter’s pad on me so will have to paraphrase what she said, though I did say I’d like to do a proper piece for the blog, when she had a bit more time).

But I wanted to post something now because Run Norwich is their first event, co-incidentally, as it happens, so I thought it was good to give them a bit of pre-race publicity.

Nicola is working on the venture with her brother Matthew. They’ve both got day jobs, but are putting a lot of effort right now getting their new venture off the ground.

Matthew, who is also a web designer and does graphics (he’s done the design work etc), said they’ll be heading to the Cardiff Half marathon on October 1 too.

Anyway, Nicola’s a keen runner and has run the Berlin Marathon, but she said she wasn’t a great fan of some of the souvenirs you can get.

Wouldn’t it be good, she thought if you could get a map of your marathon? There are two sizes A3 and A4 and they come in six different colours. At the stand you can see examples of maps of races including the London Marathon – of course the eagle-eyed among you have probably spotted that Run Norwich is a 10k, so you guessed it they’re not just restricted to marathons!

 

 

Anyway, they were both kind enough to take the trouble to have a brief chat, so I wanted to wish them well with their venture. I’m not doing it much justice here so why not pop to the stand yourself or after the race when they’ll be in Chapelfield Gardens and find out more?

Or you can follow them on Twitter @marathonmaps or Instagram marathonmaps and Facebook /marathonmapsuk.