40 weeks, 55 miles and my first completion of Paris By Night

I ran 5.4 miles on Monday and left the rest of the midweek running to give myself a good chance of running my best last night

I had this image as a fond memory from last years race. This is where the runners assemble before a race briefing then the start of the race. This year was slightly different in that Guillaume pointed out the 3 non French speakers taking part were all aware of the content of the briefing so it was going to be entirely in French. I had planned my food intake so I was eating about 40 minutes before this. My logic behind that decision was apart from the checkpoint and short breaks, this race wouldn’t afford me the opportunity to eat a meal during.

I set off as part of the pack and the pace felt comfortable enough to warm up but not like I was struggling with keeping up for the first few miles. The plan was to stay in the middle of the group for as long as possible as I knew if it came to catching up with everyone, I couldn’t ever make up more than about 100m at the pace that we had to hold.

I had spent a large chunk of this week continuing with reading the Scott Jurek book North where he described running the Appalachian Trail in America and setting the Fastest Known Time with his wife helping him crew. There was 2 parts of this which stuck with me during the race, first was about “in the case of pain, perhaps the one we know hurts us less than the one we fear” and the other was some paradoxically optimistic advice he received when nearly dropping out 1 week into a 6 and a half week run “it never always gets worse”

I had some recollection of parts of the course from last year that consistly appeared to be earlier than I remembered them, I think part of this was that I had grown used to doing longer distances in training and my GPS watch struggling to give an accurate reflection due to high buildings around most of the course.

I had some cola and pretzel sticks at the checkpoint and managed to keep up with the group for a large chunk of the race without much difficulty for a while. Unfortunately I’ve learnt in other races that this will definitely change. I found my legs felt heavy after about 25 miles but I was still able to maintain a reasonably measured gait and not over-exert myself in terms of driving my arms to keep up.

There was a few points where I had to consciously stop myself from allowing my arms to fall too far behind my back, I also noticed the outside of my left knee was stiff and although this was the same area I ruined for 3 months after Great Glen Ultra, I convinced myself that I had done high weekly mileage since October so the injury was gone, it was more likely the pain I knew rather than the pain I feared!

There is one part of this race that is more attritional than the pace and it makes a mockery of the idea that bridges aren’t really hills. It’s one thing slowing down a bit to reach the crest of a bridge, its quite another to maintain the same constant speed when you know several more of these are to come.

I had promised myself last year when I used ‘Darkness On The Edge of Town’ as a anchor motivational technique that I would come back and use another Bruce Springsteen song ‘Backstreets’ as a way to keep myself in a focused state and again in a similar stubborn approach, I was either getting dropped by the speed of the pack or finishing. I wasn’t going to accept any other outcome.

Although the race goes through lots of busy parts of Paris, there are others where it is very isolated and these resonated well with the Backstreets lyrics. I loved the idea that if I kept going at the speed I was managing, there wasn’t any chance I wouldn’t finish. The small group I was in were not increasing the speed and this included Guillaume the race organiser for large parts of the race. I found the pack was thinning rapidly and before I knew it there was only 8 runners aiming for the full course left out of the 32 that started. I only knew a few of them from last year but was disappointed when my friend Clem dropped out so close to the finish. I gave him one of those hugs where the other person doesn’t really have any say in the matter and was certain he would be back to finish next year.

Once the bridges section was out of the way I was certain I would finish and despite the time difference, it was just about getting light which was an added bonus.

I was able to manage the last few miles having used up the last of my water and food. I knew that the finish had more food and beer which was all the more tempting since I had stuck with cola at the only other checkpoint.

Completing this race gave me the opportunity to prove to myself that I could stand my ground when things were difficult and maintain a positive mindset. This is something I have doubted in the last few months and it is a brilliant feeling to have got that back from dragging myself to being one of 7 finishers in a race where previously only 10% of entrants had managed this. It was an added bonus to be the first international entrant to complete.