Wednesday recce

I couldn't trun down the invitation from Nico to go and do a recce of the St Germain corrida course on Wednesday evening. Work meant that a run on Thursday was impossible, so a nice easy jog around St Germain in the evening sounded very pleasant.

When I arrived in the town centre, there were already a couple of runners waiting: Gérald and Jérémie and both were wearing shorts. I'm not a fairy myself, but when the temperature drops below zero and there is snow and ice on the ground, I tend to avoid shorts. Gérald went one step further and was sporting a t-shirt too. He's obviously got some northern blood in him as the typical Frenchman goes into cocoon mood and pulls on several layers when the thermometer begins to fall.
This was confirmed a few minutes later by Nico when he turned up in tracksuit bottoms and 3 layers on top. So even Nico, renowned for his immoderate use of basketball shorts even in the coldest temperatures had resorted to tracksters. Mireille showed up a minute later and we set off to measure the course for this weekend's race.

We made a small loop to begin with starting from the market place and looping around back to Place de la Victoire. We then set off on the big loop of the town which was to be run twice to complete the 10km. This headed down from the marketplace towards the Place Royale but cutting off right before the square. The route then headed off downhill past Laurence's school and then turning right with a slight incline before a steep downhill section past the museum and then a hard pull uphill befoe turning right again and completing the circuit. When we ran it was slippy, icy and the uphill sections looked hard work, especially if they were to be run at 10k pace.

It was good to see the course before the race, despite the fact that I wasn't taking part as I wanted to be able to judge the performance of the athletes on the day.

10km all up in 47:50. Nice easy run to finish the day.