SainteLyon 2010

sarsfieldsrock

I've done this for the last two years now. I loved it on both occasions even if I was not in the best of shape last year for it.
Both years I was on my own but last year I did meet a group of Irish people there who were good company while we waited in the start hall in St Etienne. I don't know if they were boardies or not as I was not really frequenting here then.

Anyone else here up for it? 69k of road, trails, rocks, hills, mud and darkness. It might even snow if you are lucky.

http://www.saintelyon.com/course-raid-nocturne/;jsessionid=73E7F83CB989F0D77CE32E1A3F03666D?language=en_EN

nerraw1111

What was is it like? What kind of shape were you in doing it?

Looks like great race.

sarsfieldsrock

Ah I wasn't in great shape for it either year. Coming off Dublin marathons of 4:08 and 4:16 I did it in 8:20 and 8:40 respectively but hope to do better this year. A lot depends on the conditions. It was very wet the first year and one at one particular point you could lose a shoe by stepping in the wrong spot. I flew out on the Tuesday after and it was snowing heavily then so we were lucky it wasn't worse.

You can see from the site that there are quite a lot of climbs and descents on it. A lot of very rock trails. Over half of it is on roads so and all of the last 12k is on roads so the finish is relatively easy.

Heres my 2008 run. It was actually 69k then but the Garmin seemed to lose quite a bit on the hills.

http://connect.garmin.com/activity/18734436

mithril

It would be nice to get a group travelling over that time of year to run a marathon, but I think I would want to see a bit more of the countryside. I am guessing France looks very like Ireland in the dark?

sarsfieldsrock

Some of the running is like going through a very hilly field in Connemara. Lots of very rocky trails but you do pass through a good few villages at all hours of the morning and do get a great reception from the locals.
You don't get the locals shouting "Courage!" at 3 am in the morning in Ireland and lighting bonfires on the side of a mountain.

You will also need to produce a letter from your doctor when picking up the number or you won't get it.
They provide loads of grub at the aid stations but there are only 5 of them so you would want to bring your own water bottles.

The race coincides with the Lyon Festival of Lights with loads of laser shows etc. Besides the food is superb.

The fact that Aer Lingus flies direct to Lyon also makes it handy. I had toyed with the idea of flying out on the Saturday, going straight to the race center, leaving the bag as luggage and running the race. Then picking up the bag after the race, availing of the showers provided and then flying back to Dublin.
But Aer Lingus don't return until Monday so I decided to stay for a few days.

mithril

Thanks sarsfieldrock. You are selling it well but its very close to another ultra run I am hoping to do this year, the Art O'Neill Ultra, also at night.
You are right about Lyon as well. It's renowned as the culinary capital of Europe. I will look forward to the race report this year, and you might see me on the next one.

dermCu

If it wasn't a week after the Florence marathon I'd be signing up for this.
Next year.

duffyshuffle

I'm doing a half marathon later this month in France, you need a doctor's cert or something, presume its the same for this, do you know exactly what it needs to say or what is ok so they won't stop you racing in France?

Thanks

mithril

See this link for the Paris Marthon with details which I expect would suffice for anything run in France.
http://www.parismarathon.com/marathon/2010/us/r2_certificatMedical.html


I asked my doctor to do it previously:

The procedure was:

1. Fill in a questionaire about current state of health and any history of illness in the family.
2. Doctor reads questionaire.
3. Doctor takes my pulse and tells me I am grand.

65 Euro for 5 minutes work that is unlikely to detect a serious underlying condition.
Then I got injured and could not even run the race.

Anecdotally, most foreign runners submit a forged certificate.

sarsfieldsrock

duffyshuffle wrote: »

I'm doing a half marathon later this month in France, you need a doctor's cert or something, presume its the same for this, do you know exactly what it needs to say or what is ok so they won't stop you racing in France?

Thanks

Last year I just got my brother to write a letter which said that he had examined me and could find no reason for it to be unsafe for me to run the race. He is a GP in London so he has the headed paper etc that you might not have yourself but it shouldn't be that difficult to do it up in Word.
I gave the note in at registration. They glanced at it and handed me the number. They did ask for it but its no biggie.
If you have a doctors appointment coming up I would get it as part of it rather than paying just for that.

duffyshuffle

Thanks for replies, the missus' dad is a doc so i'll get him to whip something up, cheers

sarsfieldsrock

Suddenly this doesn't look good for me even though I have entered and am in Lyon. I sprained my ankle coming off the shuttle bus in Heathrows connection centre and then my stored bag was lost by them.
The right foot has some bad bruising on the side and is swollen midfoot. I have no gels etc for the race but I do have my gear.

I have just been informed that the bag is in the hotel reception so at least I have my gels and ibruprofen if needs be.
I will see what the leg feels like at 6pm before I decide to go or not.

Dammit but I hate injuries that are my own fault!

RacoonQueen

Hope you've been icing it Eddie. Typical case of pure bad luck unfortunately, hope it feels a little better tonight. Stay off your feet, elevate and compress. You'll be bored out of your tree but it'll give you a chance at least. Could be worse, you could sprain your ankle during the race

If weightbearing isn't too painful you'll hopefully be ok. Tough call to make whether you take part or not. I know you've been looking forward to this race.

sarsfieldsrock

Well I did the race and I broke the 8 hours. Unfortunately it was from the wrong end and I completed it in over 9 hours. It was 9:36:01 according to the website and that got me pos 1981 overall.
In my defence the course was treacherously slippy in a lot of the downhills so time was not being picked up there, only a badly bruised rear if you were lucky. There was also a lot of places where it was single file only as there was only the one path trodden down through the snow.
The foot was fine but the ribs caused me a lot of pain every time I had to wave my hands wildly to keep my balance. If I had known the course was then I would have given it a miss. No conditions for running.
This race would definitely have been cancelled or postponed in Ireland.

Oisin11178

Well done eddie, sounds very hard. I was meant to be running a marathon today over in luton but it was called off. Impossible conditions to run in.

mithril

sarsfieldsrock wrote: »

Well I did the race and I broke the 8 hours. Unfortunately it was from the wrong end and I completed it in over 9 hours. It was 9:36:01 according to the website and that got me pos 1981 overall.
In my defence the course was treacherously slippy in a lot of the downhills so time was not being picked up there, only a badly bruised rear if you were lucky. There was also a lot of places where it was single file only as there was only the one path trodden down through the snow.
The foot was fine but the ribs caused me a lot of pain every time I had to wave my hands wildly to keep my balance. If I had known the course was then I would have given it a miss. No conditions for running.
This race would definitely have been cancelled or postponed in Ireland.

You did exceptionally well to complete it given the injury and conditions.
I had a look at the web site and the clips on www.youtube.com. It's a good bit tougher than I originally understood.
Do you speak much French and if not did you find this a big handicap?
What kit did you use for the race?


I am hoping to give it a shot next year, and more immediately, trying to pick up tips for the Art O'Neill in January.

RJC

This is my 'must do' race (for race read: finish it) for 2011. I am fascinated by it like you'd be fascinated by a car crash.

If I knew some others were going to be there next year I'd be dead keen on it.


Well done BTW. I am just about able to complete 4 miles in the snow and ice so 69K is pretty spectacular.

sarsfieldsrock

It wasnt supposed to be in the snow and ice and it was only 68k this time as the run through lyon was a little bit shorter. Heres my diary entry on the day.

I checked the foot this morning and it was still sore. I took a photo of the bruise for comparison with after the race if I decided to run it. The breakfast in the hotel was nice. There was lots of fruit, bread, tea and meats if you were so inclined.
We had dinner at a pizza place and that was nice. Not great but nice. I had fusilli pastat for a starter and the vegetarian pizza option. By the time we got back to the hotel it was 2:30 so I decided to go to bed for a few hours to rest up for the race. I had almost decided not to race at this point but wasn’t quite sure so I thought that I would follow the pre-race preparations anyway.
I woke at 6 and decided to do the race. I then got into a panic about time as the last shuttle bus left Lyon at 8pm. I vaselined the feet and put the blister bandages on the nipples but forgot to put the Vaseline or bodiglide on under the newprene shorts that I was wearing under the running tights and shorts. The shorts have have deep pockets which is handy for gels etc. I had an underarmour top on with a Craft jacket and some craft gloves and hat. The jacket also has a few deep pockets in which I carried a survival blanket and some back up batteries for the head torch and a waterproof bag with some money, cash card,id,etc.
I got a taxi (E15) to the Palais de Sport and then got the bus (E210) to the race expo centre in St Etienne. I managed to get a bit of rest on that and I needed it as there was a massive queue for the numbers pick up. They had changed the system from the previous years where you found your number on the wall and then picked it up. This year everybody went through the one queue and I was queueing for about 1 ½ hours to pick up the number.
Then they wouldn’t give me the number as I didn’t have a passport or an identity card to prove who I was. Again this was new to the previous 2 years. They sent me to the litige queue and I managed to convince them there that I was indeed Eddie Murphy from Ireland. (good job I bought my Visa card as it had my name and that seemed to satisfy them).
So it was just after 10 by the time that I had everything settled. I got some water for the bottle on my waist and I was all set. Again I rested up and didn’t get out to the start until 11:50. This was a bit late and I was way down from the start. In fact I was around the corner from it I was so far back.
Still by 12:10 we had crossed the start line and we were on our way. The roads here were fine and bar the usual few steep climbs it was all good going and I was passing a lot of the walkers. The problems only started when we went off road after about 4-5 miles. The snow was very deep and the paths that, last year, have been large enough to allow 3 abreast were now only allowing single file. You could go out side of the path but then you would have to wade through snow about a foot deep and this was not a good idea. The water bottle on the waist was really annoying me at this point as it kept jumping loose. Eventually I ditched it. I had been given a cup that clipped onto my belt for use at the aid stations anyway. For anybody else running this expect a fight for places at the water stations. I could see why so many runners had camelbaks on. They only needed to refill the once.
As the race went on some paths were runnable but extremely slippy. The paths that had less snow tended to be wider but were more treacherous as the snow was compressed and you were likely to lose your footing at any time. There weren’t too many bits of road in the first half. Where it was level you could run but there are few places where it is level on the off road sections. Around mile 20 was definitely the most dangerous as there was a lot of rocks for you to do damage to yourself if you went head over heels down what is a very steep path. After mile 22 or so the going is more road than off road but some of it is fairly steep.
I must have fallen about 20-30 times during the course of the race but I quickly got the hang of falling on my butt and getting my hands down under me to break my fall. This didn’t help the muscle pain under the ribs in my back and neither did all the frantic waving of the arms that I tried to rebalance myself with after every slip of the foot.
The worst part was at about mile 35 where some French guy had blocked the road on a sharp downhill and was shouting something to everybody coming down the road. I hadn’t a notion what he was on about and kept running down the middle of the road. I suddenly copped on that he was warning people not to run down the middle of the road when I felt my front foot start sliding. I managed to set my back foot and keep my balance with my arms spread out and surfed about 20-30 feet down the road until I gently stopped a the side of the road. That got me a big a round of applause from my fellow runners.
The second half of the race is where the relay runners wreck your head with their cries of "a gauche". It wasn't as bad this year as there weren't as many of them running the downhills as previous years.
The last part of the race is on paved roads and footpaths through Lyon but it didn’t get any easier as almost all of them were completely iced up. You could run on the level parts at least and there were only 2-3 parts where it was too steep and too icy to run safely. So I got to the finish in what turned out to be 9:36. This is over an hour and ¼ slower than 2 years ago and I am definitely fitter than then but it was no surprise with the weather conditions. I don’t think that I will be back to do it again though as it is a bit of a haul over there and then from the airport to the city itself. Maybe if it was on in the summer I might reconsider. In fact I picked up a flier about a 50k run in Paris in March that I might look into. It starts at Versailles and finishes at the Eiffel tower.

PS the winner did it in 5h 18min.
Also excuse the garmin route as I seem to have hit the stop button at the first aid station and didn't notice it for a while when I re-emerged.

SainteLyon 2010