The Three Peaks involves climbing some 4,000m of ascent over Yorkshire’s three highest peaks: Pen-Y-Ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough (usually in that order), which in total is approximately 25 miles. The challenge which has been laid down to me is to complete all three within twelve hours.

Now I consider myself fitter than I have been at this point in time, but this is a totally different kettle of fish from running. I’ll be walking it – definitely not running – and there’s the fact that the route climbs three mountains and the temperamental weather that can bring. So this is no small ask.

Unfortunately, trying to ease myself into training hasn’t come very easy, even though I’m only running a very easy distance (three miles, three times a week). An injury from before Paris needs resting and I wanted to spend more time resting after Paris, so I’m finding it difficult to motivate myself and get myself back into the training state of mind.

At the end of that road, at the Place de la Porte d’Auteuil, we took a ninety degree turn onto the Route des Fortifications – which was a mild incline. Any incline at this stage, some 37kms (or about 22 miles) in is unwelcome though. Running with the pacemaker and running in a group of other people, really helped at this point. Not only was the pacemaker shouting encouragement (in French, of course) but at this point in my previous marathons I’ve usually found myself virtually alone, which saps your resolve. Keeping up with the pacemaker and the group helped me keep on track when I know that, had they not been there, I probably would have slowed down and fallen back at this point.

About a kilometre later the course entered the final phase in the Bois de Boulogne, another huge park. We took another turn onto the Chemin de Ceinture du Lac Supérieur. This was probably the hardest part of the race, not least because it was the last few miles, but also because there were relatively few supporters around this section and the tremendous strain on my legs was now impossible to ignore. I wasn’t just tired, I was getting that achy feeling where when you stop running for any reason, trying to get going again is twice as hard because your legs feel like lead.

The scenery had taken on a dull tone because we were running along a section of the park that was rather uninspiring and because the sun had gone in again. The only thing that broke the boredom of this section was the appearance of several marquees, set up by several different French marathons, advertising their races. Some even offered samples of local wines – but naturally, I didn’t partake. The course turned onto the Avenue de Saint-Cloud, which was another of those long stretches which never seemed to end. There were a few more people around the Chemin de Ceinture du Lac Inférieur, but it didn’t feel like we were just a mile away from the finish.

Within what seemed like just a couple of steps, we were back in inner city Paris again, running around the roundabout at Porte Dauphine, then along the wide boulevard of the Avenue Foch. When I saw the finish line a few hundred yards ahead of me, it all felt a bit sudden. It was a short distance from there to the finish. The pacemaker congratulated us all on running a fantastic race then allowed the pack to split up and run past the marathon photographers.

Finally, I crossed the finish line exactly five hours, twenty-seven minutes and five seconds after I started. Almost immediately the muscles in my legs started screaming and burning from over-exertion. I shook the pacemakers hand and had my photo taken by a defeated looking Frenchman sitting on a chair near the finish line.

Even though I completed the marathon under my target time of 5h30m and even though I beat my personal best (though only by a matter of seconds) it still felt a little bittersweet, because I felt that I could have run faster and shaved another half-hour off my PB.

However, I still stand by my decision not to try for a PB and to deliberately under-estimate my performance. This was my third marathon in less than a year, after all!

I suppose there is always next year…

Video: The final word

Running along the banks of the Seine in the sunshine, spotting all the landmarks, including the towers of the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower was possibly the highlight of the entire race. I was now feeling much better as I had overcome my tiredness and aching phase from earlier and was happily clocking up the miles (or kilometres).

The Eiffel Tower makes its first appearance

Whereas before I was running behind the Louvre, this time I was running on the other side of it, but I still didn’t get to see it, because the course entered the Tuileries Tunnel for about a kilometre.It got quite warm down there and I was just starting to sweat again when the course emerged onto the Quai des Tuileries and the daylight again.

Every time the course went into another tunnel, the pacemaker shouted encouragement and motivational comments like “Let’s attack this hill together” (in French of course) and every time we went under a bridge he shouted at the bystanders on top of it to give some words of encouragement. It all helped to keep spirits up.

Just after coming out of the third tunnel, we crossed the Place de la Concorde (again). After turning onto the Voie Georges Pompidou again, It became possible to see the Eiffel Tower appear from behind the trees lining the route. I saw it again as we entered the Albert 1er tunnel.

After crossing the Place de la Bastille again, the course followed the River Seine, running past some of Paris’ most famous landmarks, including the Notre Dame Cathedral and the Eiffel Tower. Watching the spire of the Tower appear from behind the trees and gradually running towards it was a genuinely beautiful sight. There were also plenty of vocal, supportive crowds in the centre as well, which helped spur me on.

Video: Passing the 30km point

Just before we got to the Trocadéro, we passed the 30km point. Now we were three quarters of the way round the course and the aching in my legs was becoming harder to ignore. Still, ignore it was all I could do and I ploughed on. I actually congratulated myself on feeling this good at this point. Getting this far whilst still feeling like I had enough left in the tank was an achievement in itself when compared to how I felt at this point in my previous marathons.

There was another water and food station opposite the Eiffel Tower where I took on another bottle of water. The discarded orange peel and banana skins made it very slippy and treacherous to try and run through and that wasn’t helped by the fact that this station was on a cobbled road. Once again I had gotten ahead of the pacemaker once I left the water/food station, so I slowed down for a moment until the pacemaker group caught me up again. However, my increasingly achy muscles meant it was becoming harder to starting running again after each walking break.

The course continued south-west down the Avenue du Président Kennedy, moving away from the riverbank and past the Maison de Radio-France. We crossed onto the Avenue de Versailles, then at the Place de Barcelone the course veered off to the right through another sponge station, down the Rue Mirabeau. There was no stopping this time, the pacemaker telling everyone to run straight through. All the sponges were long gone – none left for us – only the buckets of cold water which I willingly splashed on my face and neck. Running through the water/sponge stations always makes me feel like I’m going really fast, but the photos show that I was only moving at about a moderate jogging pace.

The next mile took me along the Avenue Daumesnil, which was another of those seemingly unending roads. It started out in the suburbs, running past some residents who appeared to be surprised by the 31,000 runners running down their street, then eventually opened into broad parkland, with trees lining the route.

At this point the pacemaker shouted something I couldn’t translate, but it became obvious when he darted off to the right and stood behind a tree. Some other runners followed him but I thought it a bit weird to go to the toilet at the same time as the pacemaker, so I carried on running. I suppose even pacemakers must answer the call of nature. This meant I was now quite far ahead of the pacemaker however and the fact that he had gone now made me feel like I had to go – so I did the same thing of ducking behind a tree and relieving myself. It also allowed the pacemaker to catch up with me and overtake me a bit.

Coming to the end of the Avenue Daumesnil, the tower of a castle gradually came into view. I didn’t know what it was as I approached it, but I know now it was the Château de Vincennes. In front of the château was another sponge station. I would have preferred another water station, but this was better than nothing. The sun had made me a bit sweaty, so I grabbed one of the sponges and cooled myself down.

The course continued down the Avenue des Minimes, entering a heavily forested area. The shade was nice and the atmosphere felt more secluded, with trees all around us and not many supporters on this part of the route. At the end of that road the course merged with the Avenue du Tremblay, which marked the most easterly point of the race. Then the course zig-zagged southwards until it joined the Avenue de Gravelle at the southern perimeter of the park.

Video: Passing kilometre 19 on the Avenue de Gravelle

The Avenue de Gravelle was another long road, but it was full of bends, so this time it felt like I was getting somewhere. At this point I was ticking along, enjoying the sunshine and the scenery of the park. As the course gradually left behind the park and moved closer to entering the city again, the number of supporters increased which helped lift the atmosphere a little.

Approaching the half-marathon point, the scenery of the parkland gave way to the more urban landscape again. The sun had gone in again, which made everything seem rather grey and dull. Still, when I crossed the thirteen mile marker and then the official half-marathon point, I was feeling good, but my legs were now starting to ache a little, which was becoming a bit distracting. This was a crucial point in the race for me – if I started feeling tired and achy now the next 13.1 miles would only get worse. I could only hope that this was a phase which I could run through.

Video: Passing the half-marathon point

For the next 1.5 miles, the course followed the Rue de Charenton, then the Avenue Daumesnil. The sun had come out again and there were more people shouting us on and some more bands were playing along the route. The further we made it into the city again, the better the atmosphere became.

Video: Soaking up the atmosphere on the Rue de Charenton

Once we made it onto the Avenue Daumesnil again, there was another of those unending roads. The relative boredom of running along the long, straight road was broken by continual encouragement from the pacemaker and the appearance of two drag queens – I nearly tripped over the kerb as we ran past them! By now it was obvious I was becoming quite tired.

The pacemaker advised everyone to take on a snack if necessary as he tucked into an energy bar. I stuck to my strategy of taking energy gels every three miles. It felt like we’d been running down this road for ages when we finally moved onto the Rue de Lyon.

Update: Half-way through

In the distance I could see a column which looked remarkably like the one we had passed in the Place de la Bastille some miles earlier. Of course, it was the same one, but I hadn’t realised the course actually passed through the Place de la Bastille twice – I just thought we might pass a street behind it the second time.

Approaching the Place de la Bastille for a second time

The course took the second left from the Bastille onto Boulevard Henri IV. Just as we turned that corner, the pacemaker grabbed a handful of bananas and passed them out through the crowd. I declined, as I hadn’t eaten them during my training so I didn’t want to chance it now. A few metres later there was a another food station, where I took my next energy gel instead. After the Boulevard Henri IV, the course turned onto the Quai des Célestins, then the Voie Georges Pompidou, on the banks of the Seine. This phase was probably the most beautiful of the whole race.

Once I’d eaten, I returned to my room to put on the rest of my clobber: A waist pack for carrying energy gels, an arm wallet for carrying my MP3 player (just in case I needed some musical motivation) and my race number and timing chip.

I just had enough time to do some extra stretches before I met with the other runners in my group in the hotel lobby at 7:30am. Waiting in the lobby left a few minutes to chat to the other runners. Most of the runners I talked to were marathon newbies, some had run half-marathons before whilst others had only started running two months ago – and now they were attempting a marathon! Once everyone was assembled, the guides led us out of the hotel through a subway and then we all walked down the Avenue de la Grande Armée.

A few metres before the Arc de Triomphe, where the race pens were, the guides gave us our final instructions to leave any bags in the baggage area at the finish on Avenue Foch and then to make our way to the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, where all the start pens were.

Now I had registered in the pink time zone of runners who expected to finish in a time of 4h30m. However, I have said before that I would be trying for 5h30m again this time. The only reason I registered in the pink zone was because that was the slowest group offered when I registered originally. So I stayed at the back of the pink zone, planning to fall back as soon as possible to my own 12m per mile pace, which would lead to a time in the region of 5h30m.

In the shadow of the Arc de Triomphe, I recorded my first “piece to camera”…

Start line update

At about 8:45 French time, the announcer kicked off the 2009 Paris Marathon with a very fast countdown. I discarded my plastic vest, but soon wished I hadn’t, as I would be waiting another fifteen minutes before I would be able to jog over the start line. Just walking up to the start was a tricky business – the road was covered with the plastic vests, discarded clothes and walking down the left edge of the road, where the crowd was less dense, there were hundreds of discarded half-empty bottles of water.

Walking up to the start line of the Paris Marathon 2009 - another ten minutes to go from here! (View full size version)

Even though the crowd was tightly packed, it started to thin out a little as people got to the start, as everyone wanted to jog over the start line rather than walk over it. Eventually I crossed the start line at about 8:57am (French time) and started my Paris Marathon attempt.

Right from the beginning my plan was to run at a steady 12-minute per mile pace. Fortunately for me, the Paris Marathon employs runners to act as pacemakers. Their sole aim is to run the race in a certain time. So, as I ran down the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, I kept on looking behind me for each pacemakers’ trademark flag. I felt like I couldn’t settle down into a good rhythm until I found the pacemaker – and when I passed the first kilometre marker I knew I had to slow down a lot more and that my pace was too fast.

Seeing that kilometre marker also got me worried about how the distance would be counted – France, of course, uses the metric system, where a marathon is 42.195km, not 26.2m. If the distance was only marked in kilometres, I would have to do some pretty quick mental arithmetic to work out when I’d passed each mile. Not something I wanted to do whilst running a marathon.

Finally the flag of one of the pacemakers appeared, but to my surprise it was the 5h00 pacemaker. So I had to slow down even more until the 5h30 pacemaker passed me. At the end of the Avenue des Champs-Élysées, the route turned left, crossing the Place de la Concorde, then making it’s way down the Rue de Rivoli.  I didn’t actually see much of the Place de la Concorde because I was on the outside of the pack of runners, so I couldn’t see much over the top of them. Then the course continued down the Rue de Rivoli. It was whilst running (slowly!) down here that I finally “caught up” with the 5h30 pacemaker group. I stayed with this group for the rest of the race.

Now that I was following a pacemaker, I didn’t need to worry about kilometres vs miles, because all I needed to do was just keep pace with the pacemaker. I was surprised just how far back the group was at the beginning, but it just goes to show how much of a mistake I could have made by getting caught in the moment at the start and by continuing at that starting pace. With hindsight I understand now that the strategy of the pacemaker was a classic “negative split” – that is, by running deliberately slower than your race pace in the first half of the race, then speeding up in the second half, you can run the distance much more “comfortably” – though that’s not a word I use often when talking about running a marathon.

I’d just like to thank those that have sponsored me again this time round.

I’ll be posting a full report soon, this time with photos and video clips. Stay tuned!

So this week is about continuing to taper and about carbo-loading until the big day itself.

My training got off to a tiring start on Tuesday when I ran one mile easy, followed by two miles at my fastest pace, another two at moderate pace and then a final mile at easy pace.

The fast miles were tough and very tiring, as my legs felt remarkably stiff and heavy and took a long time to warm up. Then my MP3 player crashed in the middle of one of my favourite running songs, which was helping me push on through the pain. So I had to stop and fix that, which interrupted my rhythm and which really annoyed me.

By the end of that run I was really tired – I had probably over-exerted myself if I’m honest. So I was glad my next two runs are fairly easy runs at a steady pace.

On Wednesday, I did four miles, with five “strides” – which basically means running at a fast pace for thirty seconds at different points during the route. I felt a little bit more flexible, but still heavy and weighed down by all these carbohydrate stores I’m building up.

Even though I’m running fewer miles now than at any time during the last four months, it doesn’t deel easier at all – in fact it feels like a bit of a drag to get going and slip into a steady pace.

It felt just like that again on Thursday when I ran one mile easy followed by one and a half miles at moderate pace, followed by another mile easy. The moderate lap was really tough because, once again, my legs felt like lead.

Still I managed to finish the last training session for this marathon in a respectable time, slightly faster than I predicted.

So that is the end of training. No more sessions before the big day. I can only hope it all pays off on the day. Wish me luck!

Unfortunately, whatever helped me fly around last time wasn’t there this time. From the outset my legs felt really heavy and my muscles ached from the start. I had to stop about six minutes after starting to remove a stone from my shoe, so I took the opportunity to do some extra stretches as well. I warmed up after the first three miles, but my muscles never totally stopped aching.

The lap system worked well again. I split the run into two nine-mile laps followed by a third four mile lap to bring me up to 22, around the South and North Bays. Running this kind of distance reminded me of just how demanding distance running is. At the end I was racked with aches and pains, which continued all right through the rest of the day. It took me all Sunday, Monday and Tuesday to recover from the effort.

Finally I must comment on the weather. I’ve been rather lucky this year with the weather, with each long run falling on relatively mild Sundays. After completing my first lap, I took the decision to dump my running coat, hat and gloves at home and the bright, constant sunshine rewarded me. The chilly breeze reminded me it was still technically Winter, but it was what I needed on this long run.

The first session of the week was on Tuesday. This intensive phase of my training plan called for a 9-mile run – on a weekday! I wasn’t sure if I could fit a 9 mile run in before work, so I decided to get up at 4:30am instead of my usual 5:00am start just to make sure I had enough time.

This plan backfired as soon as I woke up. I literally dragged myself out of bed and went through my usual routine. However, I just couldn’t get going and I felt like I was in danger of drifting back to sleep whilst doing my warm-ups.

It didn’t get any better once I started running. I was still tired from getting up so early and my muscles were in open rebellion, aching and painful from the offset. I felt like I was running with a sack of potatoes tied to each leg. I managed to complete it, but I felt shocking afterwards. So now, through that hard lesson, i know that getting up earlier than 5:00am to go training is just not an option.

After over-extending myself on Tuesday, Wednesday was a rest day, followed by my next session on Thursday.

This was a simple easy run of five miles, followed by four ten-second hill repeats. I completed it with no problems – it was probably the highlight of an almost universally bad week.

That highlight was followed by Friday’s session, which turned into something of a disaster. My schedule called for 1 mile easy (no problems there), then 8×1k at 10k pace. However, I didn’t measure the distances beforehand, so I had to estimate how far a kilometre was, which I now know that I can’t really do whilst running. Additionally, I fell for the common mistake of miscalculating how long the repeats would take (because I forgot to take into account the rest kilometres in-between). So I didn’t run as far as I should and I didn’t do as many repeats as I should.

I decided just to cut my losses and cut the in-between rest time from eight minutes to two minutes, which I could just about handle. After I’d finished I still felt like the running I had done was good, even if the session as a whole had been a bit disastrous.

So after a shaky start to the final month of training, I wasn’t looking forward to the twenty-mile long run on Sunday. I split the run into three laps: The first two were eight miles each, then finishing with a four-mile lap of the North Bay. I also tried out my new running belt, for storing my energy gels. For the first eight miles, my legs felt rather light, so the going felt surprisingly easy. By the end of the last mile, I was shattered, but I managed to do it in 4h 25m, which impressed me quite a bit.

The first training session of the week was a four mile easy run. I’ve been getting a bit bored of continually running around the North Bay, so this time I decided to run down to the end of the South Bay then back again.

On Wednesday I strategically matched my music to the training. The schedule called for one mile easy, then three miles at half-marathon pace then another mile at easy pace. That sounds easy, but this combination of distance and pace has tripped me up before, hence the decision to run to music this time.

I chose Bloc Party’s new album Intimacy because it has a fast beat and sounds a bit mental. The result? Well, it worked smashingly. I ploughed through the miles and finished on a bit of a high.

I tried the same trick on Thursday, doing 4m easy then 2m moderate. I listened to the same music again, but it didn’t have quite the same effect as last time. Saying that, I still powered through the moderate section. For the first 4 miles, my legs didn’t feel quite as elastic and springy as I like, but they weren’t stiff, so I just had to work through that. I covered the first four miles aorund the headland and then ran down to end of the Spa again, then did the remaining two miles in the North bay.

The end of the week saw the return of the dreaded cold weather, bringing with it a light frost. Fortunately, that didn’t affect me much.