Mostly recovered by now, two days later! Well, I was never *that* bad, which was quite a surprise – compared to my very first race (S Silvestre 2010) when I couldn’t go down a flight of stairs without considerable pain for a few days, this wasn’t too bad. A lot more training (and a lot more miles) went on these last races, though…

Still, it wasn’t enough! I mean, I completed my goal (finished under 1h50, with a time of 1h47m36s), but now I’m hungry for more – I have something to improve for next year, and perhaps even consider running the “full” 42k at some point.

Two things that, I suspect, had a negative impact on this particular event: I hit “the wall” too soon (about 10-12k into the race, and I was going at a very conservative 5:00-5:10/km!), that caught me red-handed (I kept going, but by the time I crossed the finish line I wasn’t too steady for a while, at least until I ate something! Should have eaten more in the morning, but I was fearing getting too full…), and the temperature!

Sure, I should be used to that given that this is my hometown 😛 (and it wasn’t as warm as it normally is…), and I’ve been training for 2 weeks here (in Kent I had typically 10 degrees C less, which was a lot better to deal with dehydration), but the fact that they initiated the race at 10h20 in the morning meant that we were running when the Sun was at its tallest position, which isn’t pleasant at all (with the addition of new, lovely, unisuit tanlines! 😛 ). I mean, couldn’t they have initiated it at 9h or even 8h30? Good thing that the next one I’ll be doing (S Silvestre 2013 hopefully, if my flight doesn’t get affected by snow in December) is in December & at 6 PM!…

Anyway, that’s the only negative point I have for the organisation of this event. It was quite a fun morning, even though my running mates ditched me half-way through (apparently I’m too polite when overtaking other runners, hence I tend to get stuck and unable to follow them! 🙂 ), just seeing that massive orange mass advancing over the riverside was quite spectacular. And 10 euro for all that the event contemplated… absolute bargain!