Paris Marathon

Another really late post...

On the 11th April this year Ching and I (along with 35,000 other people) ran the Paris marathon.

Entry in to the Paris marathon is first come, first served, the only condition is that you have a medical certificate saying that you're fit and healthy... And paid the entrance fee of course :)

The race was really well organised, all of the handouts were written in French and English. The running expo on the Saturday (where we had to hand in our medical certificate and get our number and timing chip) was huge. Lots of people helping to give out the bibs and plenty of freebies as well.

The race had water and fruit stations every 5km. The stations were about 100m long, there was plenty of fruit (orange quarters, bananas and trail mix) and bottles of water. Again, plenty of people handing the water and fruit out.

The only gripe that I have with the race was that there wasn't enough porta-loos at the start, so ended up with people just pissing on the side of the road. Although once the race started guys and gals were darting off to the sides of the roads to relieve themselves. Apart from that, everyone seemed in good spirits, PA with music pumping at the start, bands playing along the route, huge crowds cheering, was a great atmosphere.

Must admit, it was really cool to be running around Paris - the race starts at the Arc de Triomphe and heads down The Avenue des Champs-Élysées thenheads out to the suburbs and then back in to the city, eventually going passed the Eiffel Tower and finishing fairly close to the start.

As for my race...

I hit the 21km mark in just over two hours - I was hoping for a sub five hour run, so thought I was doing well. The next 10 or so km were hard, then I hit the 34km mark and I hit the wall rather hard. At this point everything was starting to ache, I had no energy left and still had 8km to go. At the 36km mark, everything that was aching, was now hurting and I was absolutely hating it. I was determined to finish, but was adamant that I was never going to do something so stupid ever again. My heart sank every time one of the pacing runners went passed and I couldn't keep up.

At 40km, only 2km to go - less than the distance around the block that I use to train at home - I was feeling a bit better about things. When I finally saw the finish line I was over the moon and did my version of sprinting to get over the finish line for a time of 5hr 17mins. Hips, back, knees and feet were hurting, but I had the biggest smile on my face - felt awesome to finish.

Caught the Eurostar back to London, walking along the platform, there was a procession of people hobbling along with their marathon goodies bag - all of them looking rather pleased with themselves.

As for me doing 'something so stupid' again... I've registered for the Paris Marathon in 2011 :)