I chose to accept the invitation of a friend, Didier, to go and race this weekend, despite that I have another event lined up for the weekend after. I doubled up this way already 3 times and success was there three times. The first time I was little sick and my sickness went away. The second time I had back pain and it went away too. Now the third time I got the flue and I am already better. I hope the tendance stays in the positive.
It was a small trail race with just a couple of participants in Puget Ville, a small village not so far from here. 10km with around 400m of gain. Some says more, around 540m, but don’t think so. I had an only GPS watch and it measured 397meters, spot on. It is called the Trail de Tour de Faucon. Being a small event there was a serious course record for the 24km distance and got broken by 5minutes. So there are always some great runners.
I warmed up progressively a little bit with my friend for about 20minutes, then I had another 45minutes to jog and run around before race start. That was great as I was still having a lot of pulmonary and throat residue from that last flu. I am never sick, but since I had the baby, I am a little bit more susceptible, because of the very lack of long sleep. We wake up every single night like once or twice for 30 to 90minutes.
I went up till the middle of the first climb. It was only about 2minutes, but a freckin’ wall. Hmm, I said to myself, this is the place, where the ranking will be decided, already in the first 4minutes. I held back a lot, everybody started out like a rocket. It was a road start. I stayed at around 12th / 15th position, but keeping an eye on the lead. We hit the wall, everybody was still running. I just put my hands on my knees, walked up that couple of hundred meters, let everybody go ahead of me and pull away. Then we still had around 150meters of elevation to go up, but that was running with gas on. In just a couple of minutes I was at second place and haven’t seen anybody afterwards.
I caught up with the first place at around the 7.5km mark, just before the final D+200 ascent, but because of the sickness, I could not open up the nitro. I came up till 100m between us, but my wheels felt off. Finally he was like 80seconds ahead at the finish line. I am not happy about this sick thing, as it is very disappointing to not be able to give your maximum. I don’t care about placing, winning or anything. I care about really asking your body a hard freckin’ question. This time I was of course giving my current max, but I felt that my muscles were demanding something that my heart and lungs could not supply.
https://www.strava.com/activities/2203284246
Now it is time to recover, get speed ready and next weekend, there will be a more suitable 8km rampage event, half city, half trail.
Boundless Runner 
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