AM - Paris time - I had a decent effort of execution on a race plan, but the time did not translate. I kind of expected that, because in the weeks leading up to the race I noticed my HR when at MRP was a good bit higher than I can comfortably cover the distance. My early training was delayed because of an injury - I think I could have used another month of training to realistically have been ready.
In my race plan, I just decided to cap my effort at my highest aerobic HR and hope that it would translate to my goal pace per mile. I have done that in my last 4 races - and I have come pretty close to my goal time in each race. Unfortunately, that did not happen today. However I executed the race plan perfectly (with a couple of exceptions (water stops) - will discuss below) - but the time was just not what had hoped it would be. Ended up hitting nearly every mile at between 7:05 and 7:10 for most of the race and was strong enough to finish with 7:02's for the last two miles.
Paris is a difficult race in some respects. The course in on very old roads, many of which are cobblestone. Also, there are lots of turns and three tunnels with sharp ups and downs going in and coming out of them. It was quite windy today too, with gusts in the 25 mph range and seemingly in every direction. In addition, there are only water stops every 5k and no gatorade at all. They have one station at mile 21 for Powerade. They don't hand out cups of water, instead they are small platic bottles with lids. You have to open the bottles in some cases. And, they are only on one side of the street.
I missed the first 5k water stop as I was on the wrong side of the street and could not navigate through the runners to get to it. At the 15k stop, I decided to use a gel and to put an electrolite tablet in the water bottle. Not easy to do whilst running with gloves on. So, I ended up stopping and refueling that way - which cost me about 45 secs of time. I did that 4 different times on the course - so my overall time was a bit inflated because of that.
In any event, the rest of the race went reasonably well - but I just never felt like I was a groove or comfortable the whole race. In addition, just knowing I was slower than planned for most of the race was a bit of a negative mental thing I kept reliving at each mile split.
The race itself is pretty cool with beautiful scenery and essentially every major sight/monument is seen during the course of the race. I also began to like the kilometer markers - even though there are 42 of them, they go by much faster than the mile markers (which they only sporadically mark in the race).
I would recommend it as a fun race - but probably not one to do if you want to PR - of course today I understand there was a course record of 2:05:11 - so what do I know.
Anyway - that's the report. Heading out now for some lunch at a quaint cafe.
Au revior.
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