English
Guess what I have been up to? Yep, running and lots of it but that’s what happens when you give yourself 5 weeks to train for a marathon! My first long run was a race which covered some of the Nice to Cannes marathon route, but in the opposite direction. It was held on the water at Jean le Pain which is a beautiful spot with sandy beaches about a 20 minute drive out of Nice.
The course was 2 x 10km laps around Jean le Pain which has spectacular sea views in almost every direction. I was quite surprised at the huge amount of people doing the race. I signed up a week and a half before the day for the bargain price of €6 which included timing chip, free t-shirt, water and aid stations, free food at the end and also a lovely flower for each competitor. The only complaint I had was that the timing chip didn’t start when you crossed the line, but when the gun went off which wasn’t good as it took me more than 3 minutes to cross the line!
With 3000 runners taking part it is a big deal and as you can imagine very congested! My goal was to be as consistent as possible in terms of my effort and hopefully time for each lap. It had been such a long time that I had run anything more than 12km I had no idea how to pace myself and given there were a couple of hills and a brisk head wind on some sections it wasn’t going to be super easy. It was great being there with my friend from Nice, Claire and some of her buddies. Nice social event with a
The first 10km went by so quickly and I was having a lovely time, feeling great and keeping up to my pace and time goals. It had been recommended to me to have a tiny squirt of Sponsor Liquid Energy Gel every 20 minutes to keep my energy up. In past years of racing my nutrition strategy has been my strong point, but has proved to be a bit of a problem for me this season. Saying that, I’m keen to rectify the situation so trying some new things and as it turns out, Sponsor works for me.
At the 13km mark I started to feel kind of tired, like I had just ran 13km, forgetting I had another 7 to go which is where the ipod comes in for a bit of a boost! I try not to use one when I do running events as I love hearing all the races noises around me and the crowds cheering but 7km is 7km and I was going to need some help!
I was still over taking people but the rate had slowed down as most people at this point were also going along pretty consistently which allowed me to get in a group of 3 runners. For the last 4km we were all doing these silly little subtle surges to see if anyone could be shaken from the group. It certainly made the time go faster because you were always wondering when the next surge would come and making sure I was ready to go along. I spotted a small sharp rise about 700m from the finish and figured that someone would have a go on that so I decided to up the speed just before we hit it and got faster as we went up. I figured the guys would be right there but I had managed to shake them which made me run even harder!
I had a strong finish and was really happy to get a time of 1.31 which got me 12th woman and 9th in my age group. Not bad for my longest run in 2 years on no specific run training! Being on the water, I collected my bits and bobs from the end and waded into the water for 20 mins to help my legs recover.
The best part of the race was it gave me a real boost to get stuck into my marathon training. I am probably going to jinx myself but I am really going to give it all to go under 3.15 in Nice to Cannes marathon. My current best is 3.23 in 2008 in Valencia where 7km from the end I had to watch the 3.15 pace group pull away from me after my quads seized up and I had to stop and stretch.
I’m getting to know every crack in the pavement, every little ridge and puddles to avoid around the outer circle of Regents Park. Because my training is a mix of distance and time I don’t want to have to think about where to go or how far I have run and with the park being 4.4km around I can work on keeping my lap times consistent. I did 5 laps on Saturday morning which was actually pretty cool, I started at 6:30am and got to see the park wake up. Going past the Zoo I could hear lots of strange noises from the animals calling for their breakfast, and then the cyclists started arriving just on dawn, plus the other runners also running laps who I made a point of smiling at.
I have my last week of hard training this week and then a week of recovery before the big day. I hope my legs can make it!
Happy training.
Cx
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