Rambouillet half marathon

Laurence and I accompanied Hélène and Didier to the start of the Rambouillet half marathon this year. Everyone had their own objectives : Didier to beat 1:30, Hélène to beat 1:48, Laurence to beat 1:45 and last year's time, and me to finish without screwing up my achilles completely.

We picked up the bibs and met a lot of runners from the club: Bruno, Brigitte, Jean-Michel, Christelle, Katia, Philippe amongst others. No sign of Nico though. I was beginning to think that his cold had got the better of him and that I would actually win this race by forfeit and a DNF on his behalf but Bruno told me that he'd spied Nico completely focused on the race and his 1:20 objective. Too bad but the real objective was to coach Laurence around the course and look after her at the feeding stations by getting her water and sugar if necessary.

We lined up and after a quick chat with the other runners who had sneaked into the sub 1:30 sas like us from the club we set off down into Rambouillet town centre. The first 2 kilometres are downhill and along the flat through the centre and we ran these faster than schedule to pick up on the time that we lost in crossing the start line. 4:49 then 4:38 according to my watch but since it took 13 seconds to cross the start, that equated to 4:36 then 4:38. So above schedule but we were soon ahead of schedule.

The first difficulty is in the 4th kilometre when you leave the centre of town and climb up a short hill into the forest. We ran this kilometre in 5:07 and so now cumulatively we were spot on target. We ran the next few kilometres at 4:52 and so although we lost a couple of seconds against the target speed, we were very close and I was watching Laurence closely to see whether the objective was feasible or not. This pace would ideally give us a total of just under 1:42 and a large improvement over last year, but I could see that Laurence was red in the face and I didn't want to push in case it compromised the race completely. Besides, Laurence was managing herself and if she thought I was going too fast, she would just let me run ahead. I would look behind, not see her in the crowds of other runners and ease off to be with her again.

We ran like this for the next 8 km until the 10km mat which we crossed in 48:53. We slowed up after this point as there were a series of small difficulties such as some little uphills and narrower sections. Laurence was feeling the initial pace and we let a few runners past at this point. The pace slowed to just over 5:00 per km and this would be the situation until the last 2 kilometres when we approached the finish and we were able to raise the pace slightly until the end.

The saddest part of the race was at the 15km mark, seeing Christelle on the side of the road with a survival blanket wrapped around her shoulder and some paramedic taking her pulse. She shouted out to me and I remembered being in exactly the same position myself in the Paris marathon in 2009.

We finished the course together in 1:44:46 so 10 seconds faster than last year but slightly disappointed nonetheless. Nico ran 1:22:57, Didier ran 1:32:55 and both were also disappointed.

I still really like this course and would be willing to come back next year to try again. Laurence seemed put off by her result and wants to try elsewhere now. We'll see.