Le Semi Marathon de Paris

This weekend, I went with my host Dad to Paris, for 18 hours. For two hours and sixteen minutes of that time I was running.
We stayed with Etienne's brother, in his house in the suburbs of Paris.
The race was really quite cool. We started out in front of this really big castle. We ran through one of the two natural parks of Paris, and into the city. Although we didn't run by the Eiffel tower, we did see it. We ran by the Bastille and the hotel de ville, then we turned around and ran back again. It was cool to run around Paris with 21 thousand other people. There was music every 5 or so km. Me and Etienne danced at just about every musical station. We stopped to take pictures, and pick up clothes that people had tossed to the ground. We found some good running clothes! It was quite cool. I wore my Canada flag and I met two other Canadians!! One from Toronto and one from Ontario. It was a groovin time. Although not so easy physically.
Without really seeing it happen, I have slowly lost my long distance endurance. I got tired after the 5th kilometre. Then I had 16 more to go.
This is me at the 10k half way point.
Needless to say, it wasn't a very fast race. It hurt. A lot. It made me miss all those early saturday morning torture sessions runs I did last year with the group. Definatly helps so much for the actual races.
I was quite dissapointed with my time of 2:16, being my personal worst half marathon time ever, hahaha, but even with that time I was 8th out of 18 on my age catagorie. Not too shabby.
In any case I think Paris is a classy place to have done my personal worst, no? I'm proud. I didn't come to Paris to get a killer time. I came to say I did it, so .... I did it. Got the tee-shirt and a medal too.
I love this picture. I think it captures well the feeling of finishing the race. Its not pretty, but I was sooooo tired and sooo happy to be done.