Reims Marathon Oct 21st 2007

It was with failure in mind that I ate my deluxe dosa in the Indian restaurant up the road from Euston station. My entry in Reims Marathon was the direct result of my failure to complete Paris Marathon back in April due to a foot/ankle injury. That entry in turn was a result of my failure to secure a place in London Marathon.

By the time I had travelled as far as Waterloo I was beginning to regret playing touch rugby on Thursday lunchtime. It is amazing how sensitive to little twinges and sniffs I can get before an event. I felt another failure coming on and the public sector strike in France meant that it didn’t even have to be an athletic failure.

The Eurostar delivered us to a Gare du Nord enveloped in transport chaos so we took the opportunity to walk south towards the Hotel Odeon on the South Bank. France is so very French and it is odd how that always strikes me. There is always accordion music, there is usually a strike, things are unnecessarily closed, the drains do smell and the women are unbelievably beautiful.

What I couldn’t believe is that we all managed to find each other. Duncan ran into Richard by accident, I met Gareth on the Pont Neuf and everyone else sniffed us out in a restaurant in the Odeon area. Only Chris was left stranded on the north bank with a bag of 1664 and MacDonalds.

The transport strike more or less finished on Friday night and we were able to get a TGV to Reims without too much difficulty. I say “without too much difficulty” but we’d probably have got nowhere if it hadn’t been for Sarah and Suzanne’s language skills.

The city of Reims (say rinse in an OTT French accent) feel not unlike Cambridge. It is flat, stone built, old and rich. What is more the air is unbelievably clean and crisp. Sarah checked us into the Hotel Cecyl with chatty efficiency and we were generally well pleased with it.

We had the slowest possible lunch on the main street and then headed off to register and collect numbers. That all seemed to go fairly smoothly and we were back in time for takeaway pasta (why can’t we have that in the UK) and a night in front of the box watching England edged out in the Rugby World Cup by the Springboks.

I was up at the crack of dawn pacing about on Sunday. It seemed to be ages before we all toddled off to our various starts. The Marathon one was near the magnificent gothic cathedral.

The first thing I noticed was the lack of women. The vast majority of participants were men between 25 and 45. The second thing to strike me was the lack of gonks, wombles, fairies and deep sea divers. The French obviously take their marathon running very seriously.

I forget everything I run past but here is what I do remember of the race itself. The start was polite, fast and well organised. We were soon running 5min kms (8min miles) and settling into a good rhythm. Running with Julia was brilliant (sort of like being a celebrity minder) with everyone shouting “allez les filles”. The snacks were awesome with dried fruit, banana, and all sorts of attractive nibbles to go with the water. We also had jelly babies to supplement the local produce.

We passed a real flower mill (which is the only legitimate use of Moulin I’ve ever seen) lots of pretty canals, an industrial area and some quiet ‘burbs. The people were very friendly and those who noticed were pleased that foreigners had come to their town to run.

At various points the 10k, the semi-marathon and our race came together. We saw Duncan twice and got high-fived by Richard. There seemed to be many more ladeez running in the other races. The locals had laid on lots of entertainment and we were treated to a string quartet, drums, a flute ensemble and a mental woman yelling through a tube.

Julia had a bit of a wobble between 20km and 30km but we ‘smashed’ (pardon the hyperbole) our 20mile records and pressed on. At 38km I remember feeling very stiff in the feet department and on a down hill stretch thereafter Julia started to pull away a bit. She wanted to stay with me but I think that would have made things harder so with a cheery “pin your ears back curly” I sent her off into the distance. By the end I was reeling her in a bit I would never have caught her.

Julia finished in 3:37:40 and I came in 43seconds later at 3:38:32

Gary Nelmes

Semi Marathon times were

Suzanne Moores 02:10:10
Richard Jones 02:03:39
Duncan Humphrey 01:41:16
Nick (it goes on the shoe not in the pocket) Harris - 01:53:08
Christian Major 01:33:04
Sarah Bird - 02:03:39