10 Things I Think About Running

10 Things I Think About The Marathon Pour Tous 10K

1. Last Minute

I think that good things come to those who give up. I won an entry to the 10K which was to be held on the Olympic Marathon route ages ago but when I looked at how much it was going to cost I gave up. The day before the race I gave one last check of Ryanair and hotels and found that what was ridiculous was now not bad. Rhona encouraged me to go because she’s great so off I went to Paris at 5:50am on Saturday morning.

2. John Terry

I think that there aren’t enough Olympics in one’s lifetime. As I was in Paris I decided I’d try and go to the stadium to see the real athletes so at 4am before going to the airport I bought tickets from the resale platform for the Stade De France for the Saturday night. The athletics finished at 9.30pm with my race starting at 11:30pm. As there was no bag drop I had to go to the stadium in a pair of Vaporflys, a singlet with a number pinned on and shorts. It might have come in handy if they were short someone for the 5000m, unfortunately they weren’t.

3. Laughing Cow

I think that getting from the stadium to the start took a little longer than I had planned. I met Shane Collins and Conor McCauley at the stadium. I ran over to their seats to watch the the women’s 4x400m team do what I normally do finishing fourth, the full kit came in handy as the security seemed to think I was an athlete and let me through a gate to get over. Once the real Olympians had finished I walked over to the train station and got the train to the Hotel De Ville where my race started. On the train I got talking to an 80 year old German man who ran 2:38 for a kilometre, lived in New York and had worked all his life with the Laughing Cow Cheese company. I told him about Dairygold and milking cows. He seemed impressed.

4. Queue Jumper

I think that the start area of the race was great fun. I had been assigned to the first starting pen. I don’t remember putting in my 10k time so maybe they looked me up. The pen was completely packed with French runners. I used my Irishness to wangle my way right up to the front along with my new friend Martin from Bordeaux who was looking to run 31 minutes. He spoke the French and I did the queue jumping which got us right up the front.

5. En Marche

I think that getting to the actual start line was a little bit complicated. I thought myself and Martin did a great job getting to the front but it was only a holding area before they walked us through a curtain up to the actual start line. There was a lot of pushing and more queue jumping while we walked but it was all fine and I was still near the front. When we got to the actual start Mo Farah appeared out of the darkness about 2 minutes before the start holding a stick which he banged on the ground and did a sort of a Haka. Then he lined up with us along with a few other French celebrities that I didn’t know.

6. Fou

I think that the start of the race was completely mad. When we got underway there was obviously a lot of adrenaline around the place as everyone took off at an insane pace. Poor Mo was swamped, even I passed him. I took it a little bit handy for the first few 100m as it was quite crowded and I wasn’t used to running at 11:30pm at night, all of my queue jumping was undone within a few seconds. Then I got going and started to pass the same people. I didn’t see Mo again.

7. City of Light

I think that there should be more races at night. Running around Paris in the dark in a race would have been amazing if it wasn’t the Olympics. But to race on the actual marathon course with the Olympic Flame/balloon glowing in the background was surreal. We ran past all the sites that I’d seen when I’d watched the men’s marathon on the bus in from the airport. We almost got a better deal than the actual Olympians as Paris is best at night in the dark with all of the lights on.

8. Suffering is Suffering

I think the great thing about running is that it doesn’t matter whether you are running a 10k om the straight road in Cork or in Paris during the Olympics. Suffering is suffering. If you can’t suffer on the straight road you won’t be able to suffer on the streets of Paris at 11:30pm at night during the Olympics. I felt like I was going very very fast for the first 5k as I was majorly suffering. I past poor Martin from Bordeaux who’s dreams of a 31 minute 10k had extinguished like the Olympic flame would only a few hours later. I got to about 7km before my own Olympic balloon burst.

9. Race to the Blue Carpet

I think that the most terrible thing about running is that you always want it to be over even when it is running a race around the streets of Paris during the Olympics. From about 8k on I was praying for the finish as my legs were hurting badly. I hoped for an Alex Yee style resurrection over the same last kilometre but there wasn’t one. I got to the right hand corner onto the finishing straight on the bridge glad to see the finish. I pretended I was an airplane on the finish because it seemed like a good idea at the time and the soft blue carpet looked like a runway at night.

10. Longest Spread Ever

I think that the Parisians know how to put on a good show. The whole race was magical from start to finish everything that you would expect from a run finishing a few minutes after midnight in Paris during the Olympics. Once we crossed the line we walked out to what was possibly the most incredible spread in history. It was about a kilometre long with lots of fruit and madeira cake. There was no tea. I had some fruit and some cake before jogging back to the hotel to go to bed because I was very tired and it was nearly 1am. I’m not sure where I’ll get the tattoo put.