Back to Anjou: 25-year flash back

After the great running experience of last week's Quicksilver 50-mile, this week looked like tapering with "only" 49 miles. It was definitely a special week with this trip to France and a weekend spent with my Arts et Métiers ParisTech College class (officially called 183 but technically 86 if we follow the American way of the graduation date), along with the class preceding us of 25 years (the 158 class) and the one following us by 25 years (208), which integrated in last September. Here with my three "Gadz'Arts godsons", Kheepik, Lotage and Dree-Ghez:
Our class size was 132, versus about 100 for the 158 and more than 170 for the 208, not including a group of 30 Chinese students who integrated the second year, after 4 years of College in China.
Overall, we were close to 300 to gather at La Pommeraye (phss), near Angers, for a memorable weekend during which we discussed passed Souvenirs, live Traditions and how we intend to maintain over the next decades the Fraternity which ties our promotions since 1780 (yes, that is 229 years, re-phss!).
Anyway, partying and networking was more the theme of the weekend than running, although I was able to run 22 kilometers (13+ miles) in the Anjou country side on Sunday morning after a few hours of sleep. It was partly rainy, and I incidentally managed to find a great trail, the GR 3. GR stands for "chemin de Grande Randonnée" and represents a network of hundreds of miles across France. Like the one I used for my ultra around Mt St Michel last summer. Sorry, I didn't run with my camera this time so no picture of this scenic run through the vineyards, pastures, creeks with water mills and landscapes with numerous fortified castles. The only living souls I saw were cows (usual) and sheep (less common), and two motocross bikers (most unexpected on a hiking trail...). No hiker, no runner on this Sunday morning. Overall, a short run but somewhat good training for Western States with the lack of sleep over the past days (I was up for 22 hours on Saturday after less than 3 hours of sleep on Friday night...).
I'm flying back this Tuesday and look forward to the coming 3-day Memorial Day weekend. I will not join the Western States camp, in order to spend more time with the family. I plan on doing a local camp like I did last year (126 miles over three days), between Mission Peak, Quicksilver, Rancho and Black Mountain. Hopefully with some high temperatures to get some heat training for Ohlone and Western States.

See you on or off the trails!