Laurence and I picked up the rest of the Le Mesnil crowd at 8:15 this morning and drove everyone to the RER to get the train in to the Eiffel Tower, where the race begins. Paul, Didier and Hélène were also taking part and we arrived at the start, smartly dressed in our bin bags and old T-shirts 45 minutes before the race was to begin. We thought we would be early but there were already a good 3500 people queued up in front of us in the starting area.
The elite got away at 10:00 for the 16.3 km with a predicted time for the winner in the 46 minutes zone. This means that they run every km around 2:50 on average including the huge hill between 6 and 8 km. I'm not just impressed but in total awe before such performances. My own aim was a more modest 1:07:00, Paul 1:12:30 and Laurence and Hélène under 1:30:00. Didier didn't pronounce his objectives.
We got split up at the start and Paul and Didier set off a minute before the rest of us. In fact, I didn't see them again until the end of the race. I set the Garmin to 4:00 per km which was ambitious after yesterday's efforts but I thought I would see how I could do. We set off and I headed to the front of our group of runners quickly chasing down the group in front. Because there is a huge range of abilities in each group it wasn't long before I was overtaking people and weaving in and out of the crowds on the South bank of the Seine. The course was flat along here and the kilometres seemed to flash by. I was running steadily at just under 4:00 per km and holding back before the hill, La Cote des Gardes appeared.
Sure enough, just before the 6km marker appeared, we turned left and began the climb up the hill.
As you can see from the profile, 140m of uphill over 2 km. I slowed down to just over 12 kmh going up this hill as I just couldn't summon the energy to get up any faster. Part of the problem was other runners blocking the way as I had to weave between people throughout the course and the roads aren't very wide in places, hence the staggered start. Part of the problem was 23 km yesterday, which I could still feel in my legs. Once at the top, I stretched out again and concentrated on regaining my previous pace. The kilometres were passing more slowly now and as I reached 10km in 42:18, I was counting them down to the end.
2 runners came past me at this point and I pushed on to stay with them. In fact, this was perfect as they were running only slightly faster than me and we stayed together until the final kilometre when they pulled away slowly to finish 10 seconds ahead. I crossed the finish line and stopped my watch. I had no idea of the time as I'd been running in virtual partner mode and just knew that I was 1:22 behind my allotted 4:00 speed. 1:06:01 showed on the watch and I was delighted. That was a minute better than target.
I saw Paul at the finish too and he'd run a fantastic 1:09:55 and was chuffed to bits. We walked backed to meet our supporters, Ally and the kids and waited for Hélène , Laurence and Didier to cross the line. Hélène and Laurence had run together and Hélène just left Laurence at the end to finish 4 seconds ahead in 1:25:06 to Laurence's 1:25:10. We missed Didier who had run slightly faster in 1:23:24. Laurence came in very red in the face and it was obvious that she had given everything over the course. She was thrilled with her result.
Official result can be found here: http://www.parisversailles.com/resultats.php
I was 271 out of 13652 finishers and 65 V1. Really pleased with result as I ran at 4:04 pace over the distance including the hill or 14.7 km/h.
Not bad for a training run !
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