semi de Boulogne [1:29:33, 1243/8134, M5M 6/206, 8⁰+rain]

First time back to the Boulogne half-marathon since 2008! With clearly a much degraded time, albeit better than the previous race in Argentan. The route has changed, with a longer part in the Bois de Boulogne, sharing the road with the hordes of Sunday cyclists that pile up loops at high speed. But still a very fast one (with a record at 1:00:11 in 2013). The number has alas considerably increased since my last visit, with 9800 registrations, which makes running in the first kilometers a challenge with hidden sidewalks, parked cars and moppets, &tc. And a permanent difficulty in passing other runners, especially on a rainy day. (The only good side was being protected from headwinds.) Once on the road by the Seine River, I managed to pass a large group conglomerated around a (1:30) pace setter and moved at my own speed, till Km16 when I started to tire and realise I was alas missing some volume of training (as running in NYC was only a slow-paced jogging). Hence wasting about a minute on the final four kilometers… (Jogging back after the race to my car, parked 3km away, proved rather painful!) As the 1:30 time was my upper limit, I am still reasonably fine with the result (and the 4’14” per km) and hope I can train harder for the next race.

semi d’Argentan [1:36:54, 29/180, M5M 2/14, 19⁰]

After a long break (since 2018), I ran my “traditional” half-marathon in Argentan, Normandy. As the new organisation of the race had not contacted former participants and had changed their webpage, I only heard about it a week before the race and hence had not trained at all for the distance, plus had a fairly busy September with morning classes and the like, hence was not in such a great shape compared with the end of the Summer. As a result I did not do great, with my second worst time ever (the worst being my first half in 1995, with only two weeks of preparation) and not even a first place in my Master category. Despite the number of participants having dwindled from the earlier 600 runners. Which meant a very solitary race as well, with just one runner passing me in the last 12km. And only the Norman field edges to try to escape the headwind…

57’32″…

20 years ago…

Argentan half-marathon

Today is the day of the Argentan half-marathon which I will not run this year as I have not yet fully recovered from my Achilles tendinitis. (If running too many days in a row, as I indulged in while in Salzburg, inflammation is back!) Frustrating, as this is my “race of the year” in the Norman countryside. But another break also occurred ten years ago, when I missed the 2009 and 2010 episodes. And somehow this is the “best year” to miss as I am switching to the next age group, V3 or grand-master!, in less than a month, and will thus end up as one of the youngsters in the next race I run! As an indicator, in the 5km trail I ran last Sunday in the Parc, I ended 4th (by one position and 6 seconds!) in my category and 2nd (by three positions and 16 seconds, plus a month!) in the following one.