Argentan half-marathon [1 33’48”-29⁰-34/540-V2:4/97]

Terrible half-marathon! The weather had been unusually warm all over the week and it was 29⁰ (Celsius, alas!) in Argentan when we started the race… As I cannot stand the heat and my favourite temperature is about 25 degrees lower, it abode very poorly of the outcome. There were about 680 registered runners but only 541 finished (I must have passed at least ten abandons). From the start, it felt hard going and I went over 4mn per kilometer from the 3rd km onwards, finishing at aroung 5mn a km… As I was plodding my way along on the 6th km, an anonymous runner came next to me and decided to run with me: this “good Samaritan”  (picture above) was immensely helpful, both as a motivation and as a protection from the wind, a constant in this race. We kept running together at about 4:15 a km till the 16th km when I slowed down and he moved forward at a faster pace, finishing in 1:31:18, just after the second and third V2. Merci, Christophe! I ended in 1:33:48, fairly exhausted (although I feel fine today!) and at a frustrating 4th position among the V2 runners. However, both previous V2 runners were at 2 and a half minutes ahead, so there was no chance of beating them in this race, this weather, and this training!, The time is one of my worse ever (except for a 1:38 in 1995 when I started running, along with Peter Green, with a mere two weeks of training!), but everyone did slow down because of the heat. I hope it snows next year…

(The pictures are taken with permission from Normandie Course à pied, a very nice site with hundreds of pictures. It seems one of their photographs got his camera bag stolen during the race, which is truly a shame!)