paris half marathon

My alarm went off little over two hours before the race. I had plenty of time for porridge and coffee and random wasting of time. Eventually it was time for me to take my flu medicines, get dressed and go to the metro. It was packed with runners. As the mass of people with numbers on their chest moved closer to the starting point I begin to feel uneasy. These people were runners – what was I doing there?

It is a funny feeling you get at a beginning of each race –you know you have been training hard, your know you are fit and you know you have had a good night sleep and you know it will be fine but still, you get scared. The one and only thing you want to do is to turn around and go back home and back into bed.

The crowd started moving and we approached the starting line – I stepped on to the side and started running. With a little zigzag I made my way through, slowly a skinny guy after another got left behind. A short while after I hit THE pace. I knew that like this I could keep going and going and going to the other end of the world. Slowly the line got thinner and thinner. I used the first drink stop to pass several hundred runners at once. Now I had space. I started to remember why I love running.

At Bastille I was tackled. Like for real – I was tackled. Some idiot had his sports slightly confused and I flew straight on my face. In the mass of people the runner behind me had no chance to react and he stepped on me. Great. I got myself up, smiled at the person who had caused the whole little accident and carried on going. I had lost valuable time, hit my hand and my head and got confused with my pace. What a prick!

Little over half way through the race the effect of the pain killers I had taken in the morning started to fade away and with that my head started spinning like mad. I increased the volume in my ipod and tried to concentrate on everything else but what I was doing. Why hadn’t I listened to the people who had told me not to run when ill? Silly, little me.

I checked my watch and swore – I was lacking behind my target. This was not good. But the end was getting closer and closer. I had done it – almost. I made an evil face to the cameraman, closed my eyes for a second and ran, and I ran and I ran like it was the only thing in life I knew how to do.

I felt sick. I felt really really sick. But I had done it.

And btw – the song playing on repeat from my ipod is called “Fighter”

Ps. My no.11 pair of Pegasus has now retired after serving for over 2000km.