Marathon Day
Trip Start
Sep 04, 2007
1
9
23
Trip End
Sep 28, 2007
Pauillac, France
Saturday, September 8, 2007
Surprisingly the morning after the pasta dinner festivities was not too terrible. I guess that last bottle of wine which we swiped was better off left for this evening as we thought!
All cars were heading in the same direction and once we hit the sea of human sized cows and lady bugs we knew we were near the race start. There was an amazing selection of costumes and some very large teams dressed alike - pirates, chickens, strawberries, robin hoods....Right from the beginning there was comments from strangers as we were obviously Canadians. Shouts of CANNAADA! and I LOOOVE CANADA! were in the air all day! Leanne picked up a bunch of leprechauns (funnily enough from Ireland) and the group made friends with some nice chickens
Finisher's Medals and Wine
.Progress out of town was really slow but that suited us as most hadn't run since the previous weekend. There were lots of mini floats on bicycles that we had to dodge especially a runaway orange steam roller and an annoying strawberry cart. We passed on the first wine station at km 1!
At km 9 we loosened up enough to commence drinking. Afterall it was approaching 11 AM and we were thirsty. Boy that wine tasted good!! Numerous chateaux, musical entertainment, zillions of photographs and wine stops later we started to get a little wilted. It got a little tough after km 30 with the 30C heat and we started to believe it really was the longest marathon in the world - after all 4 hours for 30km must be a record for all of us!!
Leanne took part in the Medoc Marathon tradition of watering the grapes at around km 32. She was not alone as there were absolutely no portapotties on the course!! Have you ever seen giant shrimp peeing enmasse in a vineyard!? Oh la la!!
We all took a pass on the oysters and smoked meats at kms 39 and 40 but the ice cream at km 41 was really appreciated
Marathon....Allez!Allez!
. Susan ate 2!!Everyone finished and received their lovely prizes - medals, a rose, knapsack and wine!!
The support from the crowd was amazing!! Shouts of Allez Canada were thick in the air. We also met a lot of other Canadians on the route, especially a lovely lady from Calgary named Lisa.
Champagne and an amazing 5 course meal at the B&B followed!
Felicitations tous! Especially to our first timers Susan and Margaret!! Yeah!!
Comments
Congratulations Ladies!
Months of training, waiting for race confirmations, trip planning, book borrowing, costume coordinating, and finishing your first marathon in France = priceless? I would say so, but you'll have to wait for the credit card statement to come in.
I'm glad to see you had spectacular weather on the other side of the pond. Congratulations to all of you for a job well done!
Cheers,
Betty
P.S. Where are the photos of Leanne watering the grapes?