When I lived in Berkeley, CA, I ran 4 miles every other day to deal with work stress and could comfortably run 10 miles. I was never fast (10-11 min miles), but I did a lot of races for fun, just as a way to be sure to get a nice run in that weekend in places where I didn't usually run. The longest distance I ever covered was 13.1 miles-- the 2 half marathons I did were the Avenue of Giants half in a beautiful redwood forest with my beloved cousin, who is like a sister to me (the only framed photo I have is of us after the race!), and the San Francisco half all by myself.
When I moved to Paris nearly 5 years ago, I found it impossible to keep up my running. Lots of adjustments to make. I was also a student again and after 6 years out of school, I really felt like I had no real free time and had to study so much, precisely because I'd been out of school so much longer than everyone else in my master's program. There were so many excuses. Here in the city of light:
1. The weather's really bad in the winter (it rains every day-- I find the winter really hard psychologically because we're deprived of sunlight for about 4 months).
2. If you don't live by a park, there's no place to run (streets are always too crowded-- unless you get up at 5 am to run).
3. Everyone stares at runners. Especially men. Especially at a woman in a sportsbra tank top. I could write an entire blog post on the regard parisien, or how women are stared at in Paris...
4. None of my friends run. In a huge change from life in San Francisco, I discovered that there wasn't a culture of fitness in Paris, more a culture of espresso, wine and restaurants. Or so I thought...
5. Finally, gyms are too expensive-- you pay upfront for the year rather than each month and it's a lot of money, even if you can pay in a couple of installments.
However, within the last few months I finally started running again. For real. And I wish I'd done it years ago. I had a gym membership and ran on the treadmill in February and March. Then my membership ran out and I couldn't afford to renew, but started running outside again, mainly from my house to park Monceau (about 3K each way) and each loop around the park is 1K. Running outside is good for the body and the soul. Running on the treadmill is phenomenally boring and I could never really force myself to do more than 5K on it.
So, to motivate myself, enjoy my newfound appreciation for my old hobby and spend time with a dear friend, one of my out of town besties and I signed up to do a 10K in the bois de boulogne last weekend. It was my first organised race in France. And like many things in France, there were several challenges involved-- these were the administrative equivalent of running 6 miles before actually doing it for real on race day!
Challenge 1: French websites. To sign up for the race, the computer refused to accept Tiffi's address b/c it was outside of France. After her non-French zipcode crashed with website 3 times, I just lied and made her my temporary flatmate in France c/o chez moi.
Challenge 2: The Certificat Medical. Then, we had to get our Doctor's notes. To run any organised race in France, you need a doctor's note "de non-contre indication." Seriously, this just means that they write a note saying that they didn't find anything that would prevent you from running the race safely. This was highly surreal, as my doctor is a sweetheart, but also easily 200 years old with a feeble little voice and fairly out of touch with the modern world of organised running. She asked, will you run all 10kms at once, or will you do half and then take a break? She also warned us not to push ourselves too hard or force ourselves and made the realistic prediction that "vous n'allez pas gagner cette course." (You're not going to win this race). We assured her that our goal was just to have fun and run the distance rather than trying to break records of any kind...
And besides reassuring elderly Geneviève the médecin that we weren' t trying to take on Kenyan olympians, what did we have to do to prove that there was nothing that would prevent us from running the race? To test our fitness, we had to do 30 squats and then have our pulses taken. I'm not kidding. She also listened to our hearts again, which she does with a stethescope (of course) and a travel alarm clock. I guess watches are too modern. You're also not allowed to talk to her during the Heart Listening/Alarm Clock Watching. She can only do so much at once.
Finally, Geneviève the Doctor signed off on her inability to find anything preventing us from running, gave us our notes and we were cleared to run 6 miles. Luckily, I can just keep showing photocopies of the same doctor's note for the next year, so no need to do squats for Geneviève again until next year.
Challenge 3: picking up race packets. This was actually easy, but we rushed there directly after getting the medical note, so we were a little worried. I expected the worst: terrible crowds, no record of our registration, refusal of our medical notes, etc. But it was fine. We had to go to a store called Planet Jogging (ridiculous name, huh? It must makes me thing of another Parisian establishment, a Japanese restaurant chain called Planet Sushi. Another shining star in the rich Parisian cosmos...) to get our race packets. Here, we were presented with our fabulous pink t-shirts which we fell in love with immediately. Best race shirt, hands down. Fancy dri-fit fabric, too. In our packets, we didn't have the usual American swag (like loads of power bars and sports drinks). Just one tiny granola bar about the size of a sugar packet and loads of brochures for other races ("Ooh, let's do this one! You run up a red carpet to a castle and the proceeds go to the Make a Wish Foundation for children with cancer!") I think that was when I realised that there was a running community in Paris afer all, and I was kind of part of it now. Ground control to Major Tom (I run to David Bowie an awful lot) on Planet Jogging!
Last challenge: pins! An épreuve the day of the race was that although we had our race bibs in the race packets, there were no safety pins with them (there usually are in the US). I asked some runners if they had extra pins, no one did and one woman showed me that she'd sewn her number onto her fantastic pink shirt, which struck me as exceptionally bizarre, but to each her own. Finally, we managed to track down some pins and I was proud of myself for dredging up the word épingle (French for safety pin). Thank my friend Odile for that one-- we once went to have her new coat altered and she and the seamstress had a lengthy conversation about how much to take it in and where to put the safety pins!
While the shirts were fantastic (as you'd expect from the world's fashion capital), I think most of the planning went into the shirts, as the logistics of the actual race were a little less impressive. It was a nice run in a forest and I really enjoyed it-- so much that I kind of sang along out loud with Blondie on my iPod, oops. Another really positive point was that near the starting line, they had the nicest portapotties I've ever seen. They had mirrors and running water.
However, the main logistical problems were that they ran out of medals and water at the end of the race! But, hey, we looked great in our pink shirts. Who needs water? Now we know: BYO water and safety pins...
Finally: my running buiddy kind of regretted not bringing her camera to the race, but obviously didn't want to carry it or check anything valuable (you could at least check a bag, which was nice. In retrospect, we should have checked on with some water bottles!)
But here are a few pictures, anyway. Here we are after about kilometer 8 each looking at a different photographer (and my glasses look really weird and heavily pixelated)! Although it looks like we're just standing around holding hands, I assure you we're running like the wind, ha! It's just that you can't see our feet. :)
Here I am, booking it to the finish line (booking it is a highly relative term...) In a philosophical, cultural difference, the finish line is called the arrival line (ligne d'arrivée) in French and the starting line is the ligne de départ. I was excited to see the finish line, since we had to run through a gate, onto the racetrack grounds, and past the clubhouse. I kept asking myself, are we done, is there no real finish line? Then finally, I saw the big inflated arch with the time clock. Ah, there you are, finish line!
All in all, great weather and great company! I'm really glad to have a friend who runs, too, and I'm delighted to be doing races again. It's so motivating and now that I'm running again regularly, I feel a lot less anxious about various ongoing existential crisis issues. And now, of course, I have a 10K time to beat!
So the next 10K? In late June in Paris!
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