marathon de lyon 2008

What other better way to kick off the season than with a marathon? I was pretty tentative about the race yesterday because of training being pretty disrupted with school and travelling and what-not, plus the weather had all of a sudden turned pretty hot over the last week and I was worried about coping with this new-found freedom from the long and oppressive winter.

Reached Lyon on Saturday and Ben was nice enough to host me at last minute's notification after the HC member who was supposed to host me texted me on Friday telling me that she suddenly could not accommodate me any more.

at the race expo

le rhone

So anyway the race was scheduled to start at 9. There were pacers marked out with flags: Green for 3hrs30mins and yellow for 4hrs. My goal this time was just to go under 4hrs, so my strategy was simply to keep as close as possible to the green flag while avoiding the yellow flag. I reached pretty early so I was able to seed myself well in the mass start pen. One unique aspect of the Lyon marathon is the chance to declare to the organisers that you are aiming for a personal best, and they will give you a special coloured number tag which allows you to start in a separate pen, behind the elites, but in front the rest. Unfortunately when I signed up I thought that I would not be fit enough to try for a PB, and so I had to stay at the back.

0900 and we were off. Along the way, we passed by the famous landmarks like Fouvière and Croix Rousse, luckily without the need to scale them. In fact, the route constituted mostly flat and wide boulevards and that made the marathon a rather manageable walk in the park (pun not intended). Talking about parks, we also ran through Parc de la tête d'or, France's largest urban park. I kept a moderate pace and kept it at 12km/h for the first 30km. At this rate, I would be able to finish the marathon in 03:30. But unfortunately for me, I started slowing down mightily from 34km onwards and it didn't help that the course from that part onwards was just a dull one along the banks of the Rhone and back to the finish line.

lyon city centre - notice fouvière in the background

Eventually, I finished 3hrs43mins (16mins slower than my PB), placing me 757 out of 2298 marathoners and 339 out of 801 runners in my category. The French are really good runners! I remember running side by side with this 60+ year old guy and at about 30km he tossed me aside like some finished powergel sachet! Madness.

Anyway this was a good race and I seriously had fun. It also got me fired up for the rest of my races here. Next up: Triathlon de Narbonne Plage on 25 May. Stay tuned! =)

running with the end in sight

parting shot