A fabulous start to the race today. Mild weather (max around 20), overcast for the most part, and a little rain.
I arrived at the campsite on Saturday evening having had a bit of a travel mishap. My train to Poitiers was delayed by 25min, leaving only a small window to find the (regular scheduled) bus to the race start - got myself in a frazzle and struggled to find where the departure point. Eventually I looked up, saw the sign “Bus Depot” (lols), and made my way there only to see the 12.10pm bus driving out. The next opportunity was either a 5pm bus, or a 4.30 train (requiring a pickup from a different location). Went with the train, got collected by Xavier, and made it to the campsite with time to spare.
Many familiar faces from my TransEspana last year, so many smiles. Was introduced to a few others, all of whose names I cannot remember (feel like we should have name tags!).
The pre-race briefing started around 6pm, with Gilles going through all the details in French while my phone desperately tried to translate it to English — I got the general idea! Once done, that we headed downstairs for some appetizers (all runners were meant to bring something from their region — I brought Violet Crumbles, as the vegmite I brought to TE last year didn’t see very popular). I cozied up with a few English speakers - one lovely couple from Germany (with a dog named Shiela), a couple of Dutchies, and Jennifer from the UK. Dinner followed - we had a very tasty meat and veg stew with couscous and wrapped up the evening with a local “Fromage Blanc” (that was basically greek yogurt) for desert.
I was bunking with Fabrice, who I knew from last year, and we’d been put up in a hotel about 700m from the campgrounds. So we wondered off there. I slept pretty well, though it was a still & warm night - alternating between blanket and no blanket, while imagining I was being eaten by mozzies (Fabrice just had to mention them before sleep time!)
Sunday morning finally arrived, race gear on, and we headed to the campground for breakfast at 7.30am. Some large bowls of coffee and caramel puffed wheat, then an hour of nervous pacing by everyone ahead of our mass start at 9am (after the first day, we are divided into two groups, the “slower” group starting an hour earlier).
The course today followed quiet country roads, heading south from Saint Savin. In total around 250m of elevation, meaning very few hills to walk up! I took it super easy for the first 20km, shuffling along and alternating with a fair amount of walking. Taking photos at every opportunity, I was trying my best to not run too quick and just settle into the run. Aid stations were approx 10km apart (3 in total today) for the 45.5km covered - the general aid station fare included boiled eggs, bread with cheese spread, bananas, oranges and rockmelon, chips, biscuits, and bread with fish. I could easily have just carried a hand-held water bottle, but decided to bring the running vest instead - some extra weight perhaps, but it wasn’t a bother.
We passed through a couple of really gorgeous towns, it’s clearly a popular area during the summer vacation, with a lot of campsites along the riverside. Thankfully everyone is back to school and work, so the area is quiet and there are very few cars on the roads.
After the second aid station I started running with a bit more purpose - there was a long straight stretch of road that would have been about 2k long, and I just felt in the zone shuffling along at a constant pace. From there I just tried to maintain the same pace, and started passing one person after another. Got it into my mind that I might be able to get my pace to under 7min/km (at the time it was about 8.1kph, maybe 7.4min/km), which gave me some focus — didn’t quite get there in the end but felt really good about how I was able to just push out the second 20km without too much fuss.
After finishing we had to cross a river on a hand-pulled pontoon. This required first pulling the boat across from the other side by dragging a chain (which took quite some time), and then about 8 of us got onboard and pulled the other chain to cross. Pretty cool way to wrap up the day!
Accomodation tonight was in a large canvas tent, it’s split into a living space, a bedroom with a double bed (shared by a couple with their dog Max), and another room with a single room and a bunk bed.
Stats for today: 45.53km, 5:21:34, 326m elevation.