Balcons de Rouen #6, and a few more laps

Paris, London, Wokefield, next stop Rouen for the wedding of one of my 13 nephews (I only have 2 nieces), hopefully the first of a long series! And I can stop by Rouen without running the balcons, which I first did as a 50K fat ass in January 2008 then, twice back to back, in July 2008.

I announced my visit to Guillaume whom I ran the balcons with in quite wintery conditions in December 2010. Guillaume is going to come to Tahoe in July to run Tahoe Rim Trail 100-mile where I'll be back as well to attend at some unfinished business. Guillaume made a few calls to local runners but it was only him and I at the start of my 6th edition, on Pentecost Monday.

After the last two snowy editions, the weather was much more clement this time, nice temperature, yet we did get some rain around the marathon mark and the trails where a bit muddy, reminding me that Normandy never seems to be short of water: my brand new pair of Brooks Launch shoes was due to a good car wash before we flew to Malta the next day! Here is one of Guillaume's pictures as we arrive at the viewpoint at the top of Côte or Colline Sainte Catherine:

3.5 years passed since my last run of this course so I had to pay attention at each intersection to make sure we were staying on course. Between the two of us, it wasn't much of a problem except in Canteleu where we encountered quite some trouble trying to avoid running on Rue Molière as I couldn't find the trail below. Fortunately, we did find the bakery which has been my main aid station on this course (Guillaume's pic).

And here is Guillaume with his UFO (Ultra FOndus) top:

Guillaume was just back from injury and supposed to taper before a 24-hour race the following weekend, but we managed to cover the whole distance together!

Guillaume ended up covering 195 kilometers at his 24-hour, hope I didn't interfere too much with his tapering. Looking forward to welcoming him in Nevada in a few weeks for TRT, where the weather will be much drier than this run in Rouen in June...

Between the wedding events on Saturday and Sunday, I also managed to run 21 and 10 laps of the 1-kilometer horse track of Bihorel's hippodrome (Les Trois Pipes). Some additional good training for the upcoming 24-hour in San Francisco.