The Skinny on the 2007 Paris Marathon

The only thing about this entry that links it to our New York isle of joy is the Statue of Liberty, Bertholdi’s gift from Paris to New York. But the narrative of the 2007 running of the Paris Marathon is one worth sharing.

I’m not a marathon-head, one who runs races obsessively. I tried it once with New York 2006 then tried it a second time in Paris in April 2007. Recently I received the promotional after-race DVD from the organizers and have two words for it: Public Relations. Man, did they cover up what was frightening about this race. But let me lay out the course for you.

It was hot. Fetid. Humid. Oppressive. Imagine – it was snowing in New York with flood waters rising in New Jersey from the final Nor’easter of the season, while I was improvising sunblock by slathering face moisturizer with 15 SPF on my shoulders and fighting dehydration on the Rue de Rivoli.

The course was new this year. Perhaps that was part of the problem as it was new to the organizers, too. The runners arranged ourselves on the Champs Elysee on Sunday morning, April 15th. The end of the pack of 35,000 backed up against the Arc de Triomphe facing east toward the starting line. I was close to the back of the pack.

With 35,000 registered there were only 717 Americans and only 16.6% women running. For the first time ever I imagined this is what it felt like to be an Olympian – I had to run for my nation and gender. There was no way I wasn’t going to finish. I don’t run well in the heat because I overheat quickly and that was all that was on my mind. Keep cool. Don’t let the men push you out of the way. With fewer English-speakers along the route compared to New York prepare yourself to be alone in your own thoughts for 26.2 miles.

I’m cordoned in the Pink zone. We are instructed to follow the pace leader for our group by following the Pink-colored balloon. Because I overheat and dehydrate quickly – I see it as my body detoxifies with vim and vigor – I always run with a water bottle filled with Gatorade strapped to my hand. I eye the fluid and resist taking nervous sips as I wait and stretch.

At 8:45 a.m. the title song from “Chariots of Fire” plays and the 35,000 runners, plus supporters lining the Champs Elysee, roar. Walk, walk, putter, shuffle, start to jog, stop, putter, shuffle, start to jog – GO! – after 15 minutes we Pinks cross the Starting Line and head East into the morning sun.

At 2K we circle the Place de Concorde monument and continue east on the Rue de Rivoli. My former college roommates who’ve received dispensations from two husbands and six children, collectively, to reunite in Paris to cheer me on wave at me from the plaza by the Hotel de Ville (City Hall). “I’m so hot already!,” I tell them, which isn’t good because I’ve been running for only 3.5 American miles. “Go back to our apartment and get my tube of Body Glide, my second bottle of Powerade, raisins, and a croissant,” I beg. “I’ll meet you along the Seine by Voie Georges Pompidou – at 26K.”

About 10 blocks further east from there a man who appears to be in his late 30s has collapsed in the middle of Rue de Rivoli, a circle has formed around him and a runner is giving him chest compressions. Perhaps we’re at Mile 4. My pack of runners goes silent. I train my eyes on the Pink balloon ahead of me.

We skim the inner circle of the Bastille monument. Although I know the Bastille prison was torn down centuries ago I can’t help but look around to absorb the scene and imagine. (A couple of weeks later when the new French president is elected I learn that the earlier Place de Concorde is a celebration point for conservatives – Sarkozy – and the Place de Bastille is the celebration site for progressives – Royal.) Survival instinct in tact, I think more about getting a piece of banane de Guadeloupe being pushed at me by a volunteer and grabbing a date (of the food variety). I try to keep my balance without slipping on the orange and banana peels as well as the discarded cooling sponges underfoot.

We continue Southeast along Avenue Daumesnil until the 12.5K mark. “Allez! Allez!” the Sunday morning Parisiennes shout at us. In this neighborhood it’s more diverse and residential. There are bands along the route when we’re on the city’s streets – funnily, mostly female bands – and the one on this avenue wears black fishnet stockings, shocking pink wigs in a bobbed style, and plays snare drums. The tune I hear as I run by is “These Boots are Made for Walking.”

We make a turn to the left/East and enter a park so far east of Paris it’s off the Streetwise Paris map, Bois de Vincennes. (The manager of the apartment we’ve rented is English. He described this park as “woods” which made me look forward to it because it might offer some cover from the sun. It’s a park. In April. It’s super hot in Paris but there are only buds on trees.)

I follow the Pink balloon.

Now, in addition to the heat I came into this race having recovered from training injuries just in the knick of time. For the New York Marathon I had injured then repaired two bulging discs in my back, thanks to the expertise of physical therapist Shinobu Ishigami at NewYork-Presbyterian. Then I developed ITB problems in my right leg. With a cortisone shot 10 days before the race I was able to to run it, though started limping at mile 18. Lots of PT followed after that. Then, while training for Paris a Baker’s cyst developed behind my right knee and I developed ITB and hamstring injuries while trying to compensate. (This sounds like either a sad-sack story or nothing compared to Lance Armstrong’s recap after he had to be carried into his hotel after running New York when I did – only faster, but more harmfully to himself.)

So I was aware of heat but also trying to take it easy on my knees. In the Bois de Vincennes I followed other runners who veered off the asphalt road through the park (picture the loop in Central Park) and ran on a parallel dirt path, ducking under sharp, Spring-ish bush limbs.

There were no crowds in the park and it went on for almost 10K (6.2 miles). Imagine silence along the New York Marathon route? It doesn’t happen. Worse, and this is when I knew we hit trouble – when we hit the first table in the park where there was supposed to be fluids there were none. Only empty Dasani bottles cast against the curbs for a long while. I don’t know what others were saying but they sounded angry – as I was. My Gatorade was getting low and I was looking forward to filling my bottle until I met up with my friends again.

By the time we reached the second table within the park and there were no fluids again but only empty tables with scared-looking volunteers behind them, runners began grasping discarded empty water bottles from the gutters and putting them in their mouths to get a drop of water from them. I clutched my water bottle and by the end of the park I was running with it held under my running shirt. Some runners looked wild-eyed from dehydration and it was frightening. I felt abandoned by the organizers in the park – no water, no volunteers, no explanation – and found myself speeding up to get back on the city streets. Into the woods was scary.

We hit the final fluid stop but there’s no water except for volunteers standing on tables with fire hoses hosing us down as we run past. I linger there in the steady stream of water, trying to bring my temperature down.

We continue to the exit from Bois de Vincennes – I remember seeing a Chateau set back from the route while we were in the park but my only thought was ‘I wonder if that Chateau has water.’ I guess it’s like running by Buckingham Palace and thinking, ‘I wonder if they’d let me use their toilet.’ When desparate, only bodily needs come to mind. The woman who carried the Pink balloon to help us keep pace runs past me. The stick the balloon was on juts out of the back of her shorts. The balloon has popped and looks shrivelled. Some might say the same about me.

Entering Rue de Charenton, still in Southeast Paris, we start to hear noise again – supporters cheering “Allez!” from the curbs, a horn band, and I see fluid tables. THERE’S WATER! Volunteers armed with red dishpans throw the water on us. I’m soaked and squeaking, from where I don’t know. I close my eyes and run toward every bucket of water thrown. I grab two cold bottles of water and down them. A sedate woman with a Cheshire cat smile and a headband stands cleanly and dryly nearby watching my animal behavior. “No eau! No eau!” I try to explain, pointing back toward the park.

(Later my friends tell me I should have said “Je ne pas eau” or something like that, which sounded to me as though I would be saying “I’m not water,” which I wasn’t. Like the Elephant Man “I am a human being” and I was parched.)

Now at the 21K mark heading west we’re in the neighborhood that borders every large city. The road is narrower and there are car dealerships and quiky-marts. The residents barely regard the 35,000 people running through their neighborhood. I see two young women in an argument with a man outside a deli. The smaller woman winds up, her motorcycle helmet in hand, and backhands the man across the face. He doesn’t respond but cowers from her. Guilty, I think and keep moving.

We run through another firehose shower. I scoop water from a red bucket a volunteer holds and dump it over my head and behind my neck. I’ve got to cool down. My sneakers are definitely squeakers.

At the 25K mark by the Quai des Celestins, my gal pals catch my attention by calling out to me. Unlike the New York Marathon I didn’t wear my name on the front of my shirt, so no one calls my name except runners behind me because we all wear a Reebok sign on our backs with our names on them. I tell them my “No eau” story, grap the Bodyglide from my bag and rub it everywhere there’s chafing from the water and the clothing. In the meantime, they’ve had brunch, toured Notre Dame and waited for me.

“Allez! Allez!” the runners shout at me as I catch up with my friends. “I’m coming, I’m coming” I reply. I take some food and tell them I’ll meet them after I finish. “Do you think you can do it?” they ask skeptically – because of my injuries and my drenched-cat appearance. “I’ll meet you after the Finish. Wait for me until 2:00 p.m. If I’m not there I’ll meet you back at the apartment.”

I take off again.

“It’ll be cooler down by the Seine,” they yell after me. I wave back at them and go.

It’s not cooler by the Seine. Only the people are. They sit on the bridges overhead, feet dangling, and shout “Allez!”

The route was touted as flat. So why are we descending to go through the car tunnels only to ascend out of them? That counts as a hill in my book even when it’s not markers 26-30K.

We enter the tunnel under the Pont de L’Alma bridge. This is where the car entered carrying Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed and there are the stone pillars with the bumper knicks on them that stopped their car and took their lives. It was a creepy landmark to be near. It was also a long, dark tunnel. I started to have the same reaction coming across the lower level of the 59th Street Bridge in the New York Marathon – by the 2/3 mark I start to feel nauseated and disoriented being in the dark and car fumes after being outside for hours. How I wish there were a crowd to pull us through as there was on First Avenue as we exited that bridge in NY. Only silence. Just in time we exit and I breathe deeply again.

We keep curving southwest along the Seine, the Eiffel Tower is on the other side of the river, and like seeing an old friend. At the plaza across from it there’s a band playing “Mustang Sally.” I stop – actually, skid on orange and banana peels, – get hosed down, eat some fruit, some dates, drink some clear liquid they’re calling an energy drink, and massage my knees. When I try to get creaking back into a run I notice I’m moving between drenched runners who are walking now. They’re not even trying to run. I have to find a path to shuffle around them. A walking woman wipes out because of a banana peel and simply sits there, stunned and looking like it was the final straw.

These are the final 10K. I’ve run 6.2 miles before. I can do this. This is “The Wall” in the New York Marathon but I think my real wall was far east in the Bois de Vincennes when we didn’t have access to fluids or fruit. I can do this.

We jog through a residential neighborhood into Bois de Boulogne, another rolling park on the western edge of Paris (if you couldn’t tell the shape of the marathon route was that of a hot dog with sauerkraut hanging out the ends of the bun). I’m sure it’s a beautiful park but it’s an uncommonly warm, sunny day and it’s too, too hot. It’s also too quiet. There’s no one left on the route to cheer us on.

I keep jogging between walkers.

Inside the Bois de Boulogne I count 14 ambulances treating runners. They’re hooked up to IVs, on stretchers or laying on the ground. One skinny person is laying under a tree, wrapped in a foil heat blanket seizing.

We pass Roland Garros, where the French Tennis Open is played. One of my friends has been looking for this on our maps throughout the trip because her goal is to attend all the premier tennis tourneys in this lifetime. I’ll have to remember to tell her.

There are signs teasing a Finish Line at us but they’re no longer providing Kms/Miles but only kilometers. I’m too tired to calculate the conversion. I feel like I’m in “Groundhog Day” and keep seeing the 38K sign over and over. Don’t we finish by running down Avenue Foch and under a banner? How could they say the Finish Line is RIGHT THERE if we’re still in the park. I think this is ironic French humor.

Finally I hear the public address system in the distance. I see the Finish Line banner. I push on – after having alternately walkd and run the last 2 miles (kms?) to cool my body down. Unlike that exultant finish in New York where the crowd pushes you on, there’s no one there except runners and officials doing official business.

I cross the Finish Line.

I get the tracking chip clipped off my shoe. Someone drapes a medal over my head. I pull off the cool down route in the Avenue Foch chute and bend against a chain link fence and begin crying harder than I ever remember crying. I squat down and sob, unable to breathe.

“Keep walking!” someone yells at me. Who knows if he’d been yelling it at me in French but I didn’t know what he was saying. I hear him and I know he’s right. I stand, wipe my face and begin the walk of the defeated Northeast on Avenue Foch. I don’t want my friends to leave the reunion area without me. I don’t want to take the Metro back alone.

Down through the exit gate on Avenue Foch I find them under the first letter of my last name. My friend calls my name: “You did it!” She’d been there in New York for me with her three boys and I was surprised and jubilant that I’d finished despite my injuries. This time I start bawling tears again.

“It was sooo hard,” I blubber out. She reaches out to hug me but I stop her – “I stink. I’m wet. Don’t do that to yourself.” As only a mom who’s had spit up and who knows what else on her she grabs me to her and lets me sob on her shoulder. My other friend looks at me with a very worried face. “I’m fine,” I lie. “I’m fine. Let’s get some carbs.”

We walk down Avenue Foch. They tell me about Notre Dame. I tell them about Roland Garros. We circle the Arc de Triomphe to Avenue Wagram where we sit at an outdoor brasserie. Our waiter, Alexandre, uses our camera to take a picture of himself, which makes me laugh, and take a picture of us. I carbo-replenish with a blonde beer.

I can’t wait to return to Paris. In JANUARY.