It was 7am this morning and I’m going through the turmoil of shall I stay in bed or get up and go for a run? For the next 20 minutes or so I justified the various arguments for and against more rest or energy expenditure, then suddenly I’m up. What else was I going to do on a damp Sunday morning. I breakfasted and within an hour I’m in the car and on the road.
The plan for today was to take part in an organised 10km run, a kind of reliability trial for next months half marathon. The location ‘Chaseneuil sur Bonniere’ in the Charente. I arrived early but there were already many entrants already getting changed and beginning to warm up. Despite this being the first running event I’d taken part in there was a certain familiarity about the organisation. The French have an effective and simple formula for this type of event. Either in a church hall, a salle de fête or some other community building will be half a dozen tables, some for registration and some with beverages and normally one with a host of prizes for the eventual winners and runners up. Each weekend morning throughout the nation there would probably be a thousand or so other sporting events happening all organised in a similar way, apart from the location the only difference would be the sport.
It seemed an age from arriving until setting off. I managed to kill the biggest part of this by doing a bit of people watching and warming up. I tried to predict the possible winners and stragglers, just glad I did put a bet on it or make my predictions public. Eventually with many others I made my way out of town to the start line. In addition to the 10k route, a half marathon option was available, for me soon it maybe, but not today.

Half marathon - first competitor home
The start was slightly downhill so made the warm up that bit easier. I found it difficult passing people the timing needs to be a bit more precise than on the bike when moving through a gap or your likely to get a kick in the balls! Wanting to keep my tackle in tact I was cautious and made my way to the roadside and risked only a kick from one side.
Each kilometer was marked and they soon passed. We made a right turn after a about 3K down into the town of Vitrac. Familiar with this route on the bike I was aware of steep exit climbing out of town. I shortened my stride and increased the cadence. Normally on the bike I would gain a few places here, on foot I remained almost neutral, only one guy powered past me and a number of others too. We were soon back on the flat and turned right again heading back toward Chaseneuil - half way there!
Managed to slowly creep past a couple of guys during the final few ks. I was beginning to feel a little cooked and the last 1500 meters was tough. I struggled in and crossed the line in exactly 46 minutes.
I had no expectation of what time I could do but felt generally happy with the result. This would extrapolate up to about 1 hour 38 minutes for a half marathon, by my not so quick reckoning. On that note, I went to watch the half marathon runners come home.
A fews weeks to build on this and hopefully remain injury free.