I just got back from a week in Paris. While in Paris a couple of times early in the morning I went running along the Seine river for a few miles just to enjoy the city while was still sleeping. There was this race tonight and the captain of my team needed a few more people, so I decided to start running with this race after a week of endless walks and doing a good speed workout. I drove to the town of Civita di Bagnoregio, known also the "dying city", the race was supposed to start at 8pm, but when we got there there was an announcement saying that the course was slightly changed and the start postponed at 8:30pm. Instead finishing running up the top of the old town on a bridge we would start walking up there and then walking down and there at the bottom of the canyon between the old town and the new town we would start the race going up and then we would finish in the new Bagnoregio. At 8:30pm we took off on a steep uphill for 1km, then we entered in a circuit of about 3.5 km with constant uphills and downhills, to be repeated twice and then the last half mile to the finish line. I didn't have any watch with me, but my plan was rather simple, going out hard and trying to keep an honest pace without racing all out. The plan was well executed until the beginning of the second loop when I started fading and to keep the same pace I really had to push much harder, at the point I realized that was not worth it, and kept fading until the end. I finished with the third woman, 5th in my age group, I don't have my time (37 minutes is an educated guess based on other people time), I have to wait for the final results to be posted. Garmin of other runners indicated 8.8km not to far off from the 9km advertised. A good training run, slighly under par, but considering I was not in racing mood-mode, after a week of vacation I was happy with the run.
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