Life goes on...

I just realized that I did not post anything since a very long time. My marathon was fine, but the weather absolutely awful: wind, rain, too few runners, got all the wind in my face, that really slowed me down. I crossed the finish line in 3h19. This was above the initial goal, but I was very happy with it, I am sure that I can make a marathon in 3h10 with good weather conditions.


One month later I applied for the O'rigole. This is one of the rudest Night Trail Runs in France. It occurs every December: 75km in the forest, departure during a cold night. Every year brought new surprises: cold, heavy rain, snow. You have to be well trained if you want to finish. The marathon was only 4 weeks behind, my legs really hurt after the first set of three loops (28km), so I decided to stop the race.

In January I joined a group of 5 runners for a night orientation raid of 90km: the Raid 28. This is absolutely insane. The starting line is revealed 1 week before the race. Is it always located in a very small town with poor means of transportation, so we had to make our  own way to get to the departure.
Then the race might be compared to the Spartan race in many points. We had to cross rivers during the night sank to the waist into a cold water, etc. Great memories! On the Sunday evening, I was running down a muddy slide and badly twisted my right ankle. By chance, at 200 meters there was an aid station. They strapped my ankle on,  but 5 hours later I was not able even to walk! The two knees were terribly painful. We had to give up at 9km from the finish line. Too bad.

I had never recovered. I cancelled all my running schedule in February, then March and April... I was really upset. Mid April, I decided to start again training and forgot the pain. My concern is that I can run very fast, perform split interval training, but I am upset that I might not be able to keep the pace on a long race.

My next challenge is the 24h of Yvelines on May the 21th. I would really be pleased to run a good distance (I need it to prevent me falling insane!) The last months were very difficult, next months cannot be worse, life goes on...