Race day in Paris!! We stayed in a hotel just five minutes walk away from the Arc de Triumphe. The race started on the Champs Elysee and would end on another street just a block or two away. The morning started out very clear and sunny - almost too sunny for my taste on marathon day, but it thankfully wasn't too hot.
In the starting corrals! This was a huge race - they said 50,000 people registered. We were in the 8th of nine starting corrals and we waited an hour to begin running after the official race start. That was lousy for standing around. But good because when we started the road was not crowded at all, which is unusual for most races espcially of this size!
I don't have many pictures from along the race. It's difficult to stop and take pictures if your goal is finish as quickly as possible. The course was fantastic though! We ran along the side of the Louvre, by the Hotel de Ville, by Bastille and into Bois de Vincennes, a large park. We were in the park for 5-6 miles. On our way to the park we saw another friend from London running the race. We also saw several friends who came for the weekend to watch. I even happened upon a friend of my cousin's from Houston! I met her and her fiance at a wedding in Finland last summer. They live in Paris and she was on the roadside watching the race! Later I found out that he was running it and would have been very near me in the pack. Small world!
One picture to me was very important and I had decided in advance to stop and take it no matter what. Even if I didn't beat my time, this picture had to happen.
It was worth it, don't you think? I did! And on the upside, I still managed to beat my time by four minutes! Laura and I stayed together until around mile marker 18. At that point she was feeling pretty good and I went through a bad spot, so we split up so I wouldn't hold her back. I rallied and still managed to finish about ten minutes behind her and we met up in the finishing area.
We made it back to the Arc de Triumph and felt very triumphant indeed!
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