I gotta run!

This morning I ran the Semi-Marathon de Paris! 

This was my second half marathon, I ran my first one last year with Jeannie in Edinburgh. This year, I didn't have much time to train, just a little over a month and with work and French classes it was hard to find the time to add in runs. However, when there's a will there's a way!

The race began at Château de Vincennes, in the east of Paris. Sunday morning at 8:30 I headed to Metro line 1 and made my way over. The metro was packed! It was similar to rush hour morning when one of the lines is slower than usual. This time, we were all huddled in the metro with our running sneakers and iPods instead of dress shoes and newspapers. The weather for the race was perfect, the sun was shining, the sky was blue and it was around the low 40s when I started. I couldn't have asked for better weather!

Château de Vincennes

The race didn't start until 10am, which was nice, as it allowed more time in the morning to get ready. A little after 10am I was penned in with the other thousands of people in my time group getting ready to start. We were off a little after 10:30!

The race went through the Bois de Vincennes, up past the Bastille and to Notre Dame/Hôtel de Ville. It then circled back around bringing us through the Marais, back past the Bastille and into the Bois de Vincennes to finish. I thought the course was nice. I hadn't run in that area yet, so it was totally new. The Paris Semi-Marathon is large, this year they reached their threshold of 40,000 people! On the one hand, it is great to be a part of something this caliber, however, I spent the entire race dodging people and squeezing by to pass them. It was as if the bottleneck at the beginning of the race never ended. As the race wore on it got rather warm and I was very thankful for the water breaks at every 5k. The last 5k was a struggle. I had a time goal in mind, under 2 hours, and I knew I would be able to break it if I kept pushing myself. Once I saw the finish line I mustered up all of my energy and sprinted towards it. I finished the Semi-Marathon de Paris in 1 hour and 57 minutes, a new PR!

My T-shirt, bib and medal!