Armistice

Public holiday today in France in remembrance of Armistice. As on all public holidays, the club has a training session in the morning at 9:00am.

I decided to make the most of my day off and to get in as many kilometres as possible. I woke up before the alarm again (it's becoming a nasty habit unfortunately) and drank my multivitamin drink before heading out through the forest to run to the clubhouse. Laurence was driving around and I though that I could run an extra 5km followed by the 17km loop planned for the day.

The day was lovely: milder than of late, and a blue sky was filling the sky. I ran through the forest at a comfortable speed, conscious that I didn't have much time to spare if I was to arrive for 9:00am. I was towards the edge of the forest when I saw a beautiful female deer standing in the middle of the forest path, watching me arrive. I was about 50m away when it finally decided that that was close enough and it bounded away into the forest.

I met Laurence at the club and was surprised not to see many more people on a public holiday. We then discovered that the start was at 9:15 to allow club representatives to attend the war memorial service, and thus guarantee our position in the current clubhouse !

It was a lovely run afterwards. There weren't many people out: Nick, Thierry, Jean-Marc, Philippe amongst others for the men. Laurence, Christèle and Jocelyne amongst the women.

We ran down towards Poissy, along "Les Crêtes" and then towards Achères before turning back and running through the forest on the other side back to the clubhouse. Most memorable was Jean-Michel running with a plastic bag in his hand, collecting as many wild mushrooms as he could, spotting them on the run. We ran 14 km all up with the club and since I wanted to run over 20 km today, I ran back through the forest at speed to add a further 5 km.

24.3 km all up in 2:07 so an average of 5:15 per km. The most remakable was the 5km at the end which I ran through the forest in 4:21, 4:12, 3:59, 4:05 then 3:52 to finish. I was feeling great and ready to stretch out again at the end of the run.

Some photos from Cross Toto. Thanks to Gilles Molinier for taking them.