Arch of Triumph

Well, thanks for the lovely comments, troops. Here's the much-advertised pic. Not plural, unfortunately. Just this one was any good. Some 31000 runners finished this race. Which is fab in terms of atmosphere and all. There's like an electric current running through the pack of runners (peloton?) at the start - though it's possibly true that towards the end it kind of fades to a low pulse that would struggle to light the display on your iPod. Fair play to the Parisians, they keep clapping and whooping, despite the fact that they saw the first runners passing two hours before.

Which is all marvellous. The one drawback of a race like this, and which is why I will hesitate before running another biggie again, is that when you finish, instead of being able to collapse in a pile somewhere and nurse your poor legs back to life, you immediately get stuck in a twenty minute queue to get medal/ water/ tshirt/ hooded black warmy-uppy thing/ out. Forget getting out; at one point I thought I was going to black out - wouldn't be surprised if a few folks did; saw a few tinfoiled casualties here and there. And anyway, when you do get out, you're faced with a massive throng of people's supporters clubs and family/ kebab sellers/ hotdog stands/ souvenir peddlars/ etc. Takes forever. Nightmare.

But! Let's not moan. I knew (roughly) what I was getting into. It's almost a week since I ran the thing - I'm more or less back to walking normally. I developed a rather worrying complaint in the right knee round about 32km which gave me the John Wayne stiff legged thing I talked about before.

I took a 1.4 litre (flashflow?) water pack thing with me, along with a bunch of these carbohydrate gel things and a blister pack of ibuprofen. Wee tip: these water packs are fantastic. You set your stopwatch timer to go off every ten minutes and you take a wee slurp. Keeps you perfectly hydrated and saves you having to rely on the water stations. I hate water stations - they're a fucking hazard. Everything's fine, everyone's running happily (or not) and enjoying running in the city of Paris. Then all of a sudden, the runners transform into a crazed mob, shouldering and elbowing people out of the way, insanely grabbing stuff, pushing others out the way - me first! me first! After that, for half a mile you're dodging banana skins and orange peel, and ducking the half consumed bottles that people lob over their shoulders when they're done. Saw a few guys get clobbered, saw a few people go over on the fruit.

Maybe that's just the French. The French don't do systems. Or, like the priorité à gauche, thing on the Place de l'Etoile round the Arc de Triomphe, they do crazy systems only the French would think up.

Oh yeah, my time was 4:08:08. Back to the training. I'll try for under 4h with the next marathon, Edinburgh. June 11. This one's for charity.

Four hours & change

In some ways, the running was the easiest thing about the Paris Marathon. I do consider myself a 'people' person, but 35000 is pushing it. Especially when they're pushing you.

Four hours & some loose change it took me. Don't have the Chip Time yet. Still limping. Paris is a whole different proposition when your knees are yelping in pain.

I'll post some pix when I get home. Tonight, bistro du coin. Tomorrow Luxembourg. Merci pour les comments, Brian et Jon. A bien tot.

only 40 000 steps to go

Last week I took a pedometer (no, I don't have sex with minors; call the dogs off) on my long run & I calculated that it takes me about 30000 steps to run just under 20 miles.

That's a lot of wear and tear.

So I reckon that when I'm done with The Paris Marathon (this Sunday, troops) I'll have knocked another 40000 steps worth of hi-tech rubber off my Asics runners.

Yes, I've just parachuted in to tell no-one in particular that I'm about to run my first marathon - the second one is in June. Still working on that damn novel, though.

airstrip one calling

This wee blog's running on its last legs, but before it staggers to a complete standstill, asphyxiated in its own noxious fumes of inertia - just like the rest of the country - I'll send you to this scary little piece of news here to discover why we should all ditch our motors and get out and run.

And here's me thinking Orwell's vision of the future was written as a warning, not a fucking policy blueprint.

Allora. Non voglio scrivere più. Preferisco correre, scatenare qualcosa. Ma che cosa esattamente, e a dove vado, ancora non lo so.

Grazie per la lettura della mia storia. Spero che lo abbiate goduto. Forse scriverò ancora volta, ma in primo devo trovare le parole.

a different view of things

what I love about running is its gathering
what I hate about Glasgow is its growl

what I love about travel is its ends
what I hate about rain is its front

what I love about a job is its work
what I hate about work is its toil

what I love about sleep is its dream
what I hate about clouds is their countenance

what I love about soup is its dice
what I hate about the cinema is its movie of the week

what I love about queues is their turn
what I hate about about friends is their chum

Aux jambes citoyens!

Bravo !

Vous êtes inscrit, au Marathon de Paris du dimanche 9 avril 2006.

Inscription pour:
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Montant : 60.00 Euros
Dossard : 2***1

Objectif: 3h45

Vous devez maintenant compléter votre inscription en envoyant votre certificat médical à A.S.O. Athlétisme - B.P. 182 - 92135 Issy Les Moulineaux Cedex.

N'oubliez pas de mentionner votre numéro de dossard.

En décembre, vous recevrez votre confirmation d'inscription indiquant la marche à suivre pour récupérer votre dossard, à Marathon Expo.


And I've booked the flight as well.

for the third and last time

I'm doing a reading on Friday evening in a local twee-shop & I thought I might read my poems of the answers. Things are always better in threes so I made me another. Number three has a title.

"the road west and the unthought consequences"

Signals in the air tell me to evacuate,
which is excellent news;

this city hisses like radio static
and I'm remembering someone else's memories;

outside
it's warmer than anyone can imagine

and when it isn't raining (which is never)
there's still a cloud; sometimes there's a rainbow.

The trees shake out their dead
and pave the road west yellow.

I sometimes have conversations with the winds and the waves
that follow no real reason: drifting, searching, here -

I'll maybe chew my lips off
or speak with gravel in my mouth.

I know that one day the monkey will come down from the tree
and we will meet at the end of it all, when all is done.

Monkey, climb out of your tree
before the hurricane shakes you.