ROUTE: Schneider Electric Marathon de Paris
DISTANCE: 42.195 km
ABOUT: The route takes in some of the French capital's most famous avenues and plazas, from the start at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe, the route heads towards the Place de la Concorde. It then takes in the Rue de Rivoli, sweeps through the Place de la Bastille and – after a glimpse of greenery in the Bois de Vincennes, views of Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower – heads to the finish.
ASICS FrontRunner Givemore Mudzinganyama raced the 43rd edition of the event on Sunday 14 April. Givemore ran a blistering 02:18:49 race to finish 14th in the men's race. We caught up with Givemore to get the lowdown:
Travelling to France was an amazing experience. Paris, the city, that was amazing. I have been in France before but that was for the Mont Blanc marathon in Chamonix, so to see all the old buildings and experience the culture was amazing. The monuments and the Eiffel Tower - wow, it felt like I was in the movies.
It was also very nice to meet some of the FrontRunners from around the world. To hear their goals and stories and to learn how they live their lives in their countries.
We were all there to do a job though. So on race day the body was feeling 100%, but my mind was playing tricks on me early on.
It was much colder than I am used to and on the train to the race start I got a bit negative because of that. This feeling disappeared when reached the start however, just because of the vibe. It was amazing!
I felt that the race feeling - the fighting spirit coming back and pulled myself together. I pulled on my arm warmers and did my warm up.
Just before the gun went I was looking around at the field and knew that I needed to be strong - I came far away and needed to do something!
From the first kilometre, the pace was super fast and I knew that if I tried to stick to the guys who were running for a sub 2:10 that I would blow near the end, so I decided to hang back a bit from the start.
My target for the halfway 21km was 1:07, so I pushed hard and did 31 minutes for the first 10km. I was feeling good and then I pushed a bit harder, in fact I was pushing the whole way and much of it was helped by the crowd.
I didn’t mind about those who had already gone up the road, I was just sticking to my pace, I wanted to go sub 2:40.
I reached the halfway mark at 1:07 exactly and pushed on. Here I saw two Kenyans dropping out of the race and felt even more positive and pushed to 30km and was on a good pace.
I had a bit of a setback at 35kms though - I had no idea what happened there my body started feeling cold and then my pace slowed a bit.
I was still pushing but lost a bit of time here.
With around 3km to go some life came back again - there were so many people cheering and it really lifted me and I managed to up the pace again and pushed on to the finish.
With 1km to go there were so many people even some FrontRunners cheering and lifted my hands so that they could cheer even more. There were people blowing bugles and shouting, I've never experienced anything like it - I thought it would be silent because I was a bit behind, but they were shouting as though I was the winner of the race.
All-in-all I'm happy with how it went and really enjoyed the race. That said, I learnt a lot from the International field.
I saw how they start their races. And now, if I run a big race like this again I will try to stick to their pace because I am almost at that level of racing. Being with them in the race and seeing my pace was a big motivator to push harder on the next one. A top 10 is definitely possible in a big International race I reckon.
