My excuse? I asked Sean to write the Blogs for the Marathon and Rat Race Dirty Weekend but, as you can tell, these never appeared!
So, sat in bed on a Saturday morning nursing a slight hangover, I've decided to take matters into my own hands and update you all on our recent adventures.
Training had been going well with both Sean and myself putting in the miles almost every evening in the lead up to our trip to Paris. We both invested in some new running shoes with plenty of time to wear them in (although mine were incredibly comfy from the first time I wore them) and I purchased new running clothes in the hope that, if all else failed, I'd still look ok whilst running!
We flew out to Paris a couple of days before the Marathon, although we arrived quite late at night so the first day didn't really count. After a restless first night we decided that we are now both too old to be staying in Hostels (Sean is nearly 30 so it's hardly surprising!). We had signed up for the Paris Marathon Breakfast run which was a 5km run the morning before Marathon day.
The weather was brilliant for the Breakfast Run and the atmosphere was great too. There were people from all over the world signed up for the warm up run and some people who were signed up to the Marathon were running the Breakfast Run with family members who had come along to support the main event. There was a couple there from South Africa, both of whom were in their 70s and ran a Marathon together every year - at that point, I thought that would be us when we were older but I quickly changed my mind the next day at about 10km in!!!
The Breakfast Run took in some of the main sights in Paris ending just next to the Eiffel Tower where we got breakfast of croissants, fruit and tea in the sunshine. As the run ended at around 9.30am we had the rest of the day to head down to the Expo, register and take in the full Marathon experience.
The Expo was brilliant and definitely formed a big part of the Marathon experience as a whole. We both spent a lot of money on overpriced running clothes because they had "Paris Marathon 2014" printed on them and we convinced each other that we HAD to buy some sort of memorabilia - so why not buy it all? We collected our running packs from the Expo which had our running numbers and important information in. This turned out to be more educational than I initially anticipated. Previously I had no idea that I needed to bring bandages for this reason:
We spent the afternoon of the first day wandering around close to our Hostel. We visited La Sacre Coeur and explored some of the smaller side streets but were conscious of not doing anything too strenuous the day before the big run.
We got up early on the morning of the Marathon and got the metro over to the start area. We were in an early wave but the streets were packed. It was a lovely sunny day and the atmosphere was amazing. I must admit that, standing in the crowds at the start line, I was actually excited. The start line was well managed and once our wave moved forwards, the approach to the start line wasn't too crowded and it didn't take long at all for us to cross over the line once our wave started.
Rather surprisingly there's not too much to say about the running part of the Marathon. We ran. And ran. And then we ran some more. After that, we ran a bit more and then we were roughly halfway so we kept running. We ran for around 5 and a half hours and it was really difficult!
We had both agreed beforehand that we were just going to run at a slow pace and try and run for as long as we could before we walked or took a break. This tactic seemed to work well and we only paused to pick up water and orange slices at the designated refreshment points for a while. The atmosphere and support was brilliant throughout the route with various live bands and a constant crowd of people lining the streets.
I really started to struggle at around 25-30km and from that point I had to walk quite a bit. My feet and ankles hurt a lot and every single step was painful. Over the last 10km or so a lot of people were dropping out and sat at the side of the road but we kept going and crossed the line in just over 5 hours 30 minutes to be greeted by a guy throwing up right next to my feet!
The first thing I did, pretty much immediately after we crossed the line was call my mum. I was so tired and proud of myself for actually finishing that I cried, mumbled something about finishing the Marathon and then hung up.
The walk back to the Metro station was extremely painful and took a hundred times longer than it should have done but it wasn't as painful as climbing the Eiffel Tower stairs the day after (clearly, we are always full of good ideas!)
Between us we raised a lot of money from you guys sponsoring us for this event so a huge thank you.
I have put together a video from the Marathon but don't worry it's not 5 and a half hours of us just running.
No comments:
Post a Comment