My time was 2 hours 16 minutes (and 11 very long seconds).
We nearly missed the start of the race due to queuing up for the portaloos:
But once we'd found the start line and caught up with the crowds, the first half was great - a wonderful atmosphere and a lovely route through Paris from the Bois de Vincennes to the Place de la Bastille (right in the centre of Paris):
From 12km until 16km things got rather harder, and more uphill, but we kept our spirits up by cheering loudly after every kilometre, and making the most of the slices of orange and bottles of water given out to us every 5km:
From 17-20km things were no longer feeling good. My legs weren't really feeling anything at all and had stopped responding to commands. Even stopping to walk was painful, so the only thing to do was to carry slowly jogging on, in a kind of trance-like meditative "feel the pain, love the pain, accept the pain" state, counting down the distance left as each kilometre got longer and longer.
The finish line approaching, I vowed never, ever, to do anything as tiring and as pointless as this again. Helen and I ran the last kilometre hand in hand, managing to keep each other going until the end:
We spent the rest of the day hobbling slowly round Paris wearing our medals proudly:
Now that my legs have recovered, I suppose it wasn't that bad. So much so that I've signed up to do another half marathon in 7 weeks time...
