My first marathon - Part 1

On April 15th 2012, I ran my first marathon. This is a personal project that I planned and prepared for months. I have so much to say about it that it will take more than one post...

My number!

The  decision: If you’d asked me a few years ago, I would have sworn that I would never run a marathon…but never say never. In spring 2011, I remember setting a reminder in my outlook calendar to ensure I would not miss the opening day of registration for the Paris marathon. I was probably one of the first person to apply as I was checking the Paris marathon website every 10 minutes from early in the morning until they opened the registration which they did quite late in the afternoon! You’ll wonder why I was in such a hurry…it’s just because it is so difficult to enter the London marathon that I thought it would be the same in Paris. But it was not the case.

The training: When I moved back to Paris last November, I really wondered how I would train for the marathon on my own. A colleague from work, Manuel, who was preparing a half marathon himself told me that he was running with some other guys at lunch time. I decided to invite myself in their little “running club”. It was really hard at the beginning (in fact, it was a nightmare) because these 4 guys (Manu, Pascal, Loic and Julien) were much stronger and fitter than me (2 of them are multi marathon runners). But I did not give up and kept running with them whatever the weather conditions (rain, cold, wind…you name it) and around February, I started seeing the results. Running with the guys has been extremely helpful and they were kind enough to put up with me and provided me with loads of useful tips to improve.

Training in Vincennes with Olivier, Philippe, Marianne and Fanny...
Stephane is taking the pic.

At the weekend, I was training in Parc de Vincennes with a bunch of friends: Marianne, Stephane and Fanny who were motivated enough to wake up early on Saturday mornings for a 10K or a 15K. I convinced Marianne to run the marathon too so we were together in this adventure. I think it was particularly important not to be alone for motivation and conviviality. I now have so many good memories from the training. I loved it just as much as the marathon itself.

The training plan: For my preparation, I followed religiously (I did not miss a session!) a training plan that I found in a book that my colleague Julien gave me called 4 months to run a marathon in 4 hours. It was based on 4 or 5 sessions per week mixing intervals, endurance and resistance training. I was running 45K in a bad week and 60K in a good one.

Pasta party

The nutrition: I do have a sweet tooth but I did an effort to evict sweets, cakes and greasy food from my diet where I introduced pasta, rice and wholegrain bread. During training sessions, I was snacking on chocolate cereal bars and almond paste.

My time goal: it has fluctuated a lot over the months! At the very beginning, I was targeting 4h30. Then in January, I was struggling so much that I revised my expectations and was only hoping to be able to run the whole 42K distance. When I started feeling stronger, hope came back and I was pretty sure that I could do 4h15, especially because to my surprise I had been able to run 30K quite easily during training. In March, I ran the Rueil Half Marathon in 1h46 which was my personal record. My colleague Pascal told me that he was sure that I would do better than 4hours and he bet on 3h50...because I am a pessimistic, I decided that he was overestimating me and in the end I set myself a goal of 4 hours. Pascal was closer to the truth since I ran in 3h53mins32secs.