So, Paris second time around - was it any better? Hmmm.... undecided. It was quicker - but only just. The weather was boiling once again (I don't understand why they don't start the event a little earlier; the elites don't start till well after the London start time and the last wave - ie me - don't get to start until 10:00 am). Running down the Champs d'Elysee is amazing, it is a brilliant start. Very unlike London runs though in that peope are allowed into the middle of the road to take pictures of their nearest and dearest - and then, when they have the picture they want, they walk across the track to get back to the path (across the flow of the runners!) The first half was done in unrelenting sunshine and out in the bois de Vincennes there is no shade whatsoever, so with the heat reflecting back off the tarmac, it is really draining, especially when all our training was done in cold and damp!
The run didn't go to plan as I managed to loose my friends and then spent ages either trying to catch up with them or waiting for them once I realised they were behind me! We had a strategy to run/walk the second half and that started really well, but as cloud cover came over, it got really humid. My friends were uncomfortable at the run pace, so we decided to split up with me running ahead - but without them I did find it much harder to be motivated to run all the run sections (bad discipline on my part - mainly as a result of not preparing enough this year. Must do better!). The Bois de Bologne is not my favourite part of the run. The little loop in it somehow makes it feel unrelenting (and again, random pedestrians crossing in front of you doesn't help). I saw one young girl accepting a lift on a bicycle... (really, I don't understand at all why you would bother doing something like this - who are you cheating but yourself?). 1km from the end, I met a friend who was there to support us and she ran part of the way with me, which gave me a bit of a pep-up and at least allowed me to finish with a bit of a run rather than walk across the line! Then everything went rapidly down hill.
First the t-shirts... of course they had run out of the size I wanted (why bother asking what sizes we need, when they take no notice of this when handing them out at the finish?). I'm pretty used to this, though. It happens a lot (but stays annoying!). Worse was to come. Having failed to get a finishers shirt I could wear, I joined the queue to collect my medal (why was there a queue? Even my run addled brain was thinking this was a bit odd). There was no medal. They had run out. Let me say that again ... THEY RAN OUT OF MEDALS!!!!! How could a major event like this run out of medals?
The queue was because they were writing down the numbers of the finishers so that we could have medals posted to us later. I was in the queue next to someone from Mexico - it was their first trip to Europe and they desperately wanted to have their picture taken in front of the Arc de Triumph with their medal. Getting one posted to them once they were home was not going to help out with that! There were after events planned too, where finishers would receive discounts on production of their medal... It just made me furious and devalued the whole run for me. I still can't believe that they did this. HOW COULD THEY RUN OUT OF MEDALS! There were some 500 hundred finishers after me and pages of numbers already listed by the time I had my number taken. I just don't understand how they could have got things so wrong (it's not as if they didn't know how many people were running!). It must be cheaper to have a few thousand left over than to have to post a thousand out worldwide to the finishers that missed out. Poor show all round.
I'm not sure now that I would ever want to do this run again 
Maybe next year we'll just have a long weekend sightseeing...
Utilita Bowl 10k late report!
Bath Two Tunnels 10k - Race Report 🥶💦
London Marathon 2018
