Orgerus - 15 km

My prayers had been answered. God exists.

It rained last night. It rained and rained and rained and then it rained some more. When we went to bed last night it was 21°C and we left the window open all evening. When we got up it was 16°C and a lot fresher in the atmosphere. The one downside was that with the window open, the sound of the rain had kept me awake most of the night and I'd slept quite fitfully. The whiskies, wine and cider after our evening out hadn't helped either and I was definitely a little rough around the edges when I woke up this morning. Still given a choice of running in 24°C, which has been the average temperature recently and 16°C, I would chose the latter anyday.

We drove to Orgerus with Nico and Ilyes and met up with François, Katia, Pascal and Sandra before heading off all together for a warm-up around the start of the course. It was fairly ideal conditions with a cool temperature but a stiff breeze that might prove to be difficult to manage on some of the more exposed parts of the course. As we warmed up, we noticed some of the other good runners taking part. Already from our club we had Mustapha, Anis, Ilyes, Nico and Eric - it didn't look as though I would be even part of the first 5 members of the club home.

I lined up at the start with Nico and Fleg who suggested that we run together. I didn't know what sort of shape he was in in but I thought that we would be closely matched. The gun went and it was soon obvious that I wouldn't be able to stay close to Nico today. He was running well ahead and was just behind Eric on the initial downhill section of the course. I ran with Fleg and we shouted out 3:30 as we went through the first kilometre. After 1.5km we head right and start up a muddy track and I picked up a few places here and felt very good in my legs. I saw that I had closed on Nico and Eric and I began to feel that perhaps if I maintained this pace that I would be in for a shouting chance at the finish.

Unfortunately, all too soon I was running by myself. I stuck with a runner for a while but he moved ahead and I saw him catch Eric who'd now been left behind by Nico.

The kilometres went by as follows:

3:31, 3:45, 3:53, 3:46, 3:47, 3:48, 3:59, 3:57, 3:53, 3:53, 3:50, 3:52, 3:53, 3:50, 3:38

I tired at the half-way point as the continuous hills took their toll and I began to look over my shoulder just before 10km to see where Fleg was behind me. There was a good gap at 10km but this had narrowed rapidly by 12km and I was convinced that the group of 4 runners that he was with would catch me and overtake me. I prepared myself for the worst but it never happened and I was able to maintain a pace to hold them off.

I could see Nico and Eric in front all of the way around but they never came back to me and Nico, particularly, ran a great race finishing 2 minutes ahead of me in 55:41 while I crossed the line in 57:39, my best time ever for the course. Fleg finished only 12 seconds behind so I was grateful that I had the energy and guts to push until the end.

François had a good race beating Jean-François home with Pascal finishing not too long afterwards. I ran back to see how the women were doing and Katia beat Sandra in a final sprint to finish in 1:11:24 and 1:11:25 with Laurence finishing 30 seconds behind in 1:11:53.

Pleased with the run overall as I felt good at the start if a little drained by the finish in the legs from Les Clayes on Friday and lack of sleep. I checked some previous year's results and saw that I beat Eric's times from 2 and 3 years ago so I can still hope to improve in the next couple of years.