This was the intention at least: to enjoy a pleasant run to Cora, chatting with Nico who I hadn't seen in a few weeks about our usual subjects: wine, women and song, not forgetting PSG's performance.
Nico is a great fan of PSG and highly enthusiastic now that the Qataris have finally injected some cash into the club and spent €85m on transfers to boost the level of players. He is expecting some quality football and a return to European competition, which, quite frankly, quality is not the first word that springs to mind when discussing football in the Paris region. He was very hopeful that the tide had turned and that PSG was now on the right track to becoming the great club it used to be (personally I wasn't born when this was the case and so I don't know which pre-war era he was referring to). Nevertheless, as we set out Saturday morning I detected a spring in his stride and some optimism that had been missing a long time from the young lad's face (*).
Having exhausted the subject of PSG, we talked about other subjects including upcoming races and most notably Paris-Versailles and Marseille-Cassis. I sense that Nico is very worried about the hills on both of these courses and feels that my recent stay in the Alps has boosted me tremendously and I'm once again a force to be reckoned with. He's right of course, but I didn't want to undermine his confidence further so I told him that he'd come good on the day - the hill for Paris-Versailles is only 2km long albeit with a 16% gradient, and the hill for Marseille-Cassis is slightly under 10km of ascent, so he should manage this if he abstains from sex, alcohol and late-night poker parties for the next few months... I can't say that he looked entirely enthusiastic about the prospect, in fact he turned slightly pale but this might have been since we increased the pace to around 4:20 per km at this point.
Nico managed to catch a breather when we bumped into Olivier out for a long training run before attacking the TDS at the end of the month. This race is over 110km with over 7000m of ascent. Olivier was looking fine and revealed his secret weapon when it comes to training for long trail runs : Sex Pistols at full volume on the iPod. Apparently your brain turns to mush after a few minutes and the pain is unnoticeable thereafter. Just remember that you heard it here first. We set off again and Nico struggled to Cora and then begged to slow the pace down before we attacked the uphill section back to Pavillon de la Muette. It was actually hard enough getting him this far since we crossed a particularly attractive female runner heading in the opposite direction on the way and it took all the strength I could muster to hold onto his 20 year old Champion vest and stop him from jogging after her. I have to admit that Nico had made a special effort in his attire this morning and must have asked Michel Z for some tips on finding the most attractive running gear on the market. I really appreciated the faded look of the formerly blue top which after successive washes in what must have been a sewage pit was now a very attractive shade of grey.
We managed to get to Pavillon de la Muette with Nico still breathing and when we attacked the next section of uphill, I pushed the pace slightly harder, basking in the glory of having Nico behind me, breathing very heavily down my neck in what can only be described as a pant. He was suffering and when I took pity on the poor lad and eased off the pace slightly, he responded by overtaking me and leaving me in his wake. No sense of dignity whatsoever. Anyway we finally left the forest and ran the last road section through Le Mesnil together with a quick sprint finish to end in a very respectable time.
15km all up in 1:05:36 or an average pace of 4:25. Not bad going.
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