New Year's Day

Laurence and I got up relatively early (9:00am) despite having made it to bed at 3:00am after a good evening out to welcome in the New Year. Le Mesnil le Roi made it into the national news too when 3000 ravers descended on the town for a New Year's party in the maze of underground passages dug out by the Germans in the second World War under the town. They were stopped by the firemen since the generators they were using were creating high levels of carbon monoxide in the tunnels. almost had a disaster on our hands. As we drove back from our evening out, we came through town and have never seen so many people before. The police had already arrived by then and there were a few arrests for drunk and disorderly acts.

So, we set off early-ish the next morning and passed the remnants of the disbanded rave party as they began to head home. We picked up Brigitte and I ran the first 4 kilometres with Brigitte and Laurence at an easy pace towards Cora. I left them after this start with the intention of running around Cora, while they were to cut back up to Pavillon de la Muette, thereby cutting out 2km of the course, and I would catch them after this.

I set off at a nice trot, mainly to impress the girls, and covered the next few kilometres at marathon pace: 4:18, 4:11, 4:09, 4:06. I then ran into (literally) Sylvie, one of the best V2 (50-60 category) runners in the area, who ran the next 2.5km with me as I tried to catch up with Laurence and Brigitte. We ran these in 4:12, 4:15 and 4:10 which was quite impressive since this includes the long uphill section to Pavillon de la Muette. I often see Sylvie training early in the morning in Maisons Laffitte so it was nice to catch up with her and to have a chat together. I finally caught Laurence and Brigitte just after this section and we ran the last 5.5km home together.

Nice day. Not too cold but still larges patches of snow left in the forest which was surprising since all the snow around the roads has long since disappeared.

16.6km all up in 1:23 or an average of 5:03 per km.