In article , Alun
writes:

Then outside the disaster arena, there's all the marathons,
walk-a-thons, bike-a-thons and myriad other public events for which
hams routinely provide communications. Our club supports 4 or 5 of
these per year.

Those are good practice.

BTW, I am not intending to call anyone stupid, but I just couldn't resist
the title.

Some things just "write themselves..." :-)

By the way, the Los Angeles Marathon was a success on Sunday,
record turn-out, everything run just fine. It can be done very well
without any amateur radio help but the ARRL copy scribblers
would have a cow about that. :-)

LHA / WMD