Cross de Bercy 2011 [v2&3]

[Warning: this post about a race I ran yesterday is unlikely to be of interest for most readers!]

Following my (un)reasonable time last year, I registered again for the annual “Cross de Bercy”  run by the Sport Club of the Finance Ministry (with whom/which CREST is affiliated). This is a two loop 10km race taking place in the Bois de Vincennes around the old velodrome on a painful [and far-from-the-country] path, which usually goes under a severely burning noon sun. This year, rain arrived at last after a two month drought and the race temperature was thus much more pleasant. As I had been suffering from repeated tendon and knee injuries since January, I was feeling rather insecure when getting on the starting line… Anyway, I managed to stick to the lead group on the first km and then gradually slowed down to a four minute/km pace. The fourth to sixth kilometers were the hardest ones, with several runners passing me, and then I found a second wind, something that had never occurred before, and I took up speed again, passing some of those earlier runners. Here are the times recovered from my watch:

As for last year,  some of the times or rather the distances are clearly untrustworthy! (a) I did not save the second k, so the two red dots at 2km and 3km are halves of the cumulated time at 3km; (b) there was no marker for 5km and I pressed the button after leaving the stadium (blue line), so it is more likely to consider the red dots than the brown dots for 5km and 6km, which clearly show that the fifth km was not right!; (c) the 10k time of 4:55 is definitely wrong: I did a 300m lap on the stadium sprinting against another runner at full speed (and ending up winning because the other runner stopped too early!). One good surprise with this race is that I did not feel any of the usual pain from my knee. Another one is that despite this dismal time of 38:30, I ended up third in my category (V2)! This was the case last year,  except that I was not yet in this category, but I had little hope to repeat this feat this year… After the race, Julyan and I took two Velibs to get to Hebibert’s seminar and managed to get there in time!!