Paris-Alsace - the recap

The finish!!!!!

Wow!  Is there anything else to say but wow?  Well, yes, there is, but those three letters also seem to sum it up fairly nicely.  Of course I will go into much more detail.  Buckle down, it's a long one!

I'm not even positive where to begin.  I've known for a few years that I wanted to do this race; multiple stages, grueling endurance, and pushing yourself beyond your limits.  What's not to love? 2017 was a rough year, so I decided to have some fun in 2018 and then refocus.  Thus my hope of qualifying for and participating in this race.  I was lucky enough to be invited to race this year.  Usually there are qualifying races in France that you must do.  But the race organizers have a few slots that can be filled without the qualifying races.  They understand that for some it's not easy to get to France to race.  They told me that if I successfully completed a Centurion race I could get one of the bonus slots.  Since I earned my Centurion badge in 2016 I had met their requirements, so they invited me to come.

Team Erin!

Before I forget, because there's so much to go over, but I wouldn't have done it without my team!  John Constandinou, Karen Davies, Emmanuel Tardi, Dave Talcott and Jacques (I forgot his last name!)  They kept me going, fed, protected and taken care of.  And thanks to John for also updating the FB site so people could go along.  A  million and a half thanks are not enough!!!!

Check in.  This banner goes on the van

Then came the planning.  You have to have a support crew, with a camper van to follow behind you the entire time.  I won't go into all the gory details, but trust, me, there was a ton of planning!

The race finally came, thank goodness, I was so excited for the race I was like a kid before Christmas.  Here's how the stages worked:

Stage 1:  9.2K in 8 laps around the city center.  Wednesday at 4:00 PM
Stage2: 34.8K in one really big loop.  Wednesday at 9:00 PM
Stage 3:  200K in one really, really long line.  Thursday at 5:00 PM
Stage 4:  56 K in one long line, over two mountain passes.  Saturday at 10:00 AM

Start of stage 1, with Eddy Roze.  He was a 4:04 50K walker in the day! 

Since Stage 1 and 2 were both short and on the same day I was basically going to attack it as a RW workout day.   I figured in those two stages I could really play to my strengths, since I knew my weaknesses would flare up in the third stage.  So I had a blast in the first two stages.  I came across the line second overall in the first stage, over 10 minutes ahead of the second woman.  I averaged about 5:24 per K pace, something like that.   I was all set to go prepare for the second stage (stretch, eat, sit) when they told me I had to wait for the jersey presentation, and that wouldn't start until everyone had finished.  But how fun was that?  Being presented with the leaders jersey, which of course was pink for the women.

Getting the pink jersey for stage 1

Then it was jump in the van to drive to the town where the second stage started, and eat along the way.  The race started off with me, the men's leader, and the leader of the petite race.  The men would continue on after the women stopped, so they started off a bit more conservatively.  I was happy starting off around 6:15 per K pace.  So I just walked along through the countryside happy as could be.  Karen rode her bike with me and we were having a great time.  Then some nasty hills came up and Karen jumped back in the van.  That bike was not meant for serious hill climbing.  Later Dave came out and joined me.  We saw some amazing views, the sunset was fantastic, the moon was huge.  Just about everything went great.  The only thing was somewhere around 25K I had to go to the bathroom, bad!  The van was there so what you do is stop, the van catches up to you, and the van stops and you can go in the van and do whatever you need to do.  I had a few very uncomfortable moments in the bathroom and I was off again.  But then, about 5K later I really had to go again, bad!  So the van stopped again.  I started to worry, not for that stage, but for the next day, I couldn't be stopping every few Ks.  If anything I wouldn't be able to stay hydrated or keep my electrolytes and stuff in place.  But I'd worry about it later.

During the time when I was still legit race walking.  I got a lot of compliments on my RW technique.

So many people on the side of the road cheering.  The kids loved it and loved the high-fives.

I arrived at the finish just before midnight, the first person there!  As far as we know it's the first time a woman has arrived to that checkpoint first, so that made me feel good.  Of course, as I said, the men continue on longer, so it's not like they were only going to that point, but still, I'll take as much positive energy as I could!  People were cheering and happy and I got interviewed for Belgium TV.  I was again presented with (another) leaders jersey.  Then it was eat, get refueled, and to the hotel.  It would be our last night to sleep in real beds for a while, and I knew I'd need to get as much rest as possible.

End of stage 2.

Being interviewed. 

Of course when I got to the hotel, around 2:00 AM I was totally jacked up and it took me forever to calm down to sleep.  I got on FB and read a lot of the amazing comments that people had written and that made me feel so good!  Got up hungry and went and ate as much as I wanted, knowing I was about to burn it all off.  Then off we went to the start of the third stage.

We got there with probably 4 hours to spare, so it was a matter of hurry up and wait.  I ate, relaxed and tried not to get too nervous/excited.  Finally the time came to start.  Since I was in the lead by about 40 minutes or so I started first.  There were so many people at the start, it was a big party atmosphere!  The 200K stage started off with four 1K loops around the square so they could see you and cheer for you, it was awesome!  It was already quite warm so I was really working on staying hydrated, making sure I drank at least every 2K.  Karen was again with me on the bike as everything was quite flat for a long, long time.

Four times around to start off stage 3.

I started off around 7:00 per K pace, a bit slower at times, and felt good.  I was eating and drinking.  Then, at one point I had something to eat and had to go to the bathroom, like right then!  Karen said she had some anti-diarrhea pills.  So I took some, because I knew it would be a disaster if that kept going.  And they worked!  Every six hours I would take a tab.  However I took the dumb things for literally about 48 hours, which then presented some different problems at the end of the race.

All was great until about 50K or so.  By that point it was dark, which was fine, but it started to drizzle.  no problem, I can handle some rain.  Then it started to pour, buckets!  I stopped and changed my clothes and put on some waterproof stuff.  Boy was that the right decision!  It absolutely poured for quite a while.  At least it never got really cold, as cold and rain would've been miserable.  By that point Dave was walking with me and we had a lot of fun, or at least as much as you could in the pouring rain.  Then some of the "trouble" started about 85K or so.  My body started to say hey, this is a long way, when do we get a break?  The answer of course was there was no break and my body started to get grumpy.  And I started getting some blisters.

Rain, rain go away!

I started to slow down, not a ton, but some.  Doubts started to fill my mind.  Things like, you're not even half way into this stage and you're already starting to hurt?  Then what about stage 4?  What will you do then?  Why did you think you could do this?  You don't train for really long endurance races?  What makes you think you can do this?  Of course I knew all this going in.  I knew I had never done anything this long.  The longest I've done is 100 miles, and stage three was 124 miles by itself and the whole race is almost twice that.  But I came into the race saying I would not stop but for two reasons:  1. I developed an injury that could be career ending or 2. if I was timed out.  See along the way you have checkpoints where they sign a sheet saying what time you make it to that point.  You have time limits that you have to make each checkpoint by.  If you don't make it by a certain time then your race is over.

Night time has been tough for me in the 100 milers I've done.  Really I'm just trying to make it to dawn.  But this night time I started having a mental crisis.  I'd stop to use the restroom (this time  just normal stops, because I was doing well at staying hydrated) and be saying, I'm not giving up.  I had thoughts going through my head that people were thinking "yeah, she went out too hard, she won't make it."  Or "she can't do this, she only does short stuff."  and I became terrified that I was going to fail.  By this point dawn was rearing it's head, which was good and that helped.  I had stopped to change my shoes (they were wet still) and that was a great thing.  My feet felt better, but there were still blisters forming and there.   The mental doubts were still looming though.  At one point I said I wanted to walk alone and I took my phone to listen to some podcasts.  I took some pictures, cuz I could and at one point I started crying out of frustration.  I took a picture of that too....

Definite rough patch.

But the cows were cheering for me.  They ran along side until the fence stopped them!

Then I just said to myself, and out loud, I'm not going to fail, I'm going to do this!  and that seemed to be the pivotal moment.  Everything went up from there.  I didn't always walk faster, but mentally I was much better. 

Along the was the support was unbelievable!  People in towns would come out and cheer like crazy.  Cars driving by would cheer and clap.  One guy almost drove himself off the road because he took his hands off the steering wheel and was clapping like crazy.  There was one guy, in the middle of no where, that cheered and after I went by gave a goodie bag to my team for me with jam and sweets in it.  In the US, if cars had to slow down to go around or by the vans there would be a lot of upset drivers.  I only saw two or three drivers who were annoyed, otherwise everyone was yelling support, it was very cool.

My Emmanuel pose.  Whenever I see Emmanuel at a race I do this pose for him.  I did it for each of the four stages.  

Because of when stage three started it meant walking at night twice, which was a bummer for me in terms of night walking, but the good part was it was cooler.  Daytime of stage three got really hot.  It wasn't necessarily that it was a million degrees, I think it was low 80s, but the sun was really intense and there was little shade and few clouds.  It got harder to stay hydrated, although I was always able to pee so I never got too bad.  At one point the sun just got to be too much so I asked for an umbrella.  We found one and that really helped.  John took a picture of me carrying it while Dave was with me.  Someone got concerned on FB that I shouldn't have to carry the umbrella, but I just have to say that picture was taken during the approximately 2 minutes I carried it myself while Dave was getting in his pack to get me some food.  Otherwise Dave or John was carrying it for me.  They were amazing!  So in that sense the sun going down was good.

Bright sun, finally starting to go down. 

The blisters finally got to the point where I was having difficulty walking.  At a check point I asked for medical to help with the blisters.  When they called I don't think they said it was just for blisters because I was sitting there waiting for them and they came flying down the road and jumped out of the car.  I was like, whoa, it's okay, just blisters.  So they helped fix me up and the break (about a half hour) did my legs a lot of good.  In fact I felt so much better I thought that some occasional breaks would do me good.  So I planned some in.  Every 50 or so K I would plan a 20-25 min break.  I would lay down for about 15 min, use the restroom, eat and change clothes if needed.  It was really the right move, so I'm really glad I learned that about myself.

Some amazing roads and scenery. 

Then the first really "bad" thing happened.  I had reached a checkpoint and had planned a break.  Took my break, and started off.  We went a few hundred meters and the people in the van were hollering.  I look back and there's smoke coming out of the van!  Well, not out of the van as in the inside, but out the bottom of the van.  So we have to stop.  Which meant I had to stop.  See you can't walk without a vehicle behind you.  So no van, no walk.  They checked the oil and it said it was empty!  The van was supposed to have been fully serviced.  Luckily there was a  gas station about 100 meters ahead.  So we get up there and.... they were closed!  Because we were near a check point a judge went by.  I told them what was happening.  he said he had some oil in his car!  So he kindly gave it to us!  Then another judge was there and he also had some oil.  They put a call out to people and about 2 hours later someone drove by us and gave us another liter of oil.  So we were able to keep going!  Whew!  but all that cost me about an hour, which was really frustrating and caused me some stress that I didn't need when I was already that tired and needing my energy.  Even if the van had broken down I wouldn't have been forced to stop.  Emmanuel was our official gofer, he had his car, so we could have put the flashing light on his car and put as much food and stuff in his car as we could and gone along in that, but there would've been no bathroom and no place to lay down.  It would've been rough, but it would've allowed me to continue.  Whew!


I got to the point where I was just going checkpoint to checkpoint.  It was a series of small "races."  I would get to a checkpoint and then it was like I would start over.  It wasn't that I had 60 whatever K to go, I had 19.3K, 11.7K, 24K or whatever the numbers were.  Mentally that made it easier.  But the last stretch was rough.  I was sooooooo tired, mentally and physically.  At that point Dave was walking with me and I was having a hard time keeping my eyes open.  I was strangely dizzy.  It was very misty out and I was seeing things everywhere.  I know there wasn't a horse by that mailbox, but boy I sure saw one!

Then, there it was!  The end of stage three!  I had made it with about an hour and a half to spare!  Obviously not a lot of time, but I had done it!  Then it was jump in the van, eat something and lay down.  I managed to sleep about 2 hours while John drove to stage four.  He woke me up about an hour before I was to start.  I ate and medical came to do my feet one last time.  Man did it hurt.  My heels had such blisters that when I laid on my back I couldn't put my heels on the bed, I had to hang them over the edge.  They fixed them up good, but it was painful, there were definitely tears!

Finally made it to the end of stage 3!

The start of stage four was another party.  The leaders had gone off an hour earlier but there were still a bunch of us getting ready to go.  We had gone through how fast I needed to get to each check point and I was nervous.  I was basing it off how slow I had ended up going the last night (as slow as 12  minute Ks in a few parts) and I was worried I wouldn't make it.  John said he'd never seen anyone not make it the last day, so that gave me hope.  I started off and Dave was going to do most of the day with me.  We started walking and I was quickly last.  He suggested I try more of a race walking technique.  I gave it a go and it felt great!  Play to my strengths!  So I was able to pick it up a few minutes per K and it felt really good!  My smile was back!  I caught back up to the pack and passed a few (who would later pass me on the massive downhills).  Stage four starts with going over two  mountain passes.  It's about 16K of going up, up, up.  There were some amazing views!

Down, down, down, but lots of beauty.

The top was awesome!  But what comes up must come down, and boy did it come down.  I think it only took 10-12K to come down and parts were brutal.  I made Dave go sit in the van because I knew I'd need him later in the race and he didn't need to beat himself on those hills.  After a few K of really painful downs and guy came by.  I thought I'd try to keep up with him and I let him pull me along for a couple K.  I was able to pick up the pace by a few minutes per K and got to the bottom faster, so that was great!

I don't remember much else along that patch until one town, Kaiserberg.  It was all cobbles!  They were so painful!  It was beautiful and I wanted to look around and smile and wave to all the people cheering, but every time I did I'd step bad and hurt my blisters.  Emmanuel found me ice cream!  The best ever!  It was getting hot again, I had a wet towel over my shoulders and the ice cream was such a treat!

Beautiful town, awful cobbles.

Mmmmmm, ice cream!

Near the end I got the motorcade, which was awesome.  It's the same company that does traffic control for the Tour de France, so that was fun.  Finally, and I do mean finally, we made it to the end.  I ended up with five motorcycles in front of me, honking, using their sirens.  people in the town were clapping and cheering.  They gave me my flag and I saw the finish line.  Oh my gosh, what a feeling!  I'm tearing up just thinking about it again!  I'd done it!  I'd actually done it!  All the doubts, all the pain and I'd pushed through it!  Not on my own by any means.  My team helped me and pushed me and supported me and lost sleep and exhausted themselves so that I could have this amazing experience.  It means the world to me!

I crossed that line and everyone was cheering.  Everyone wanted their picture with me.  People were hugging me and clapping my back.  I'm surprised I didn't fall over!  There's this awesome video of me crossing the line and Sergey, a Russian guy we'd met in Lyon for World Masters was there and he's smiling and cheering and hugging me and I turn because they called me some where else and he sees the camera and looks at it and gives a huge fist pump in success.  The women's winner, Tatiana, came up and gave me a big hug, which was awesome.

With Sergey.  He was on the crew for the men's winner.  

The Russians invited us over for Champagne,, which I had a sip and made a huge face in disgust, because I just don't like alcohol!  But it was sweet to offer and to want to celebrate.  I made an offhand comment that I was hungry and immediate they were offering me some of their food.  Such great sportsmanship and kindness

By that time my body said that's it.  My feet were killing me.  The rest of me felt fine.  The shower felt amazing and I was able to eat some.  My eating this race was by far the best I'd done for a long race.  I didn't eat a ton, Dave was amazed that I could survive on so little compared to him, but I never really felt hungry, and if I did I ate.

Awards was awesome.  I wish I spoke French so I could've understood more.  But it was awesome.  I got fourth!  I'm the first American woman to finish and the highest place of any American.  One American guy, Ivo Majetic, has finished the race in 2016 and he was fifth.   Everyone wanted pictures and getting to talk with people was awesome.  So many wonderful people!

Awards.  I was fourth!  The highest place of any American in history.

Giving a gift to the race director.  The shirt says London, Paris, Rome, Owego :) 

Slightly successful selfie.  

I'm sure I'm forgetting so many things.  Obviously I race that takes (me) 50 hours is hard to summarize in one blog post.  I know time will blunt the extremes of the race.  I expected it to be tough and it was.  I knew I could do it and I did.  Yes there were doubts, but I still knew I could do it. I knew I wouldn't give up and I didn't.

The race organizers were outstanding.  The judges did their jobs, but you could tell were also cheering for the athletes to succeed.  The volunteers at the checkpoints were always smiling and happy and cheering.  The volunteers at intersections were always mindful of safety and cheering.  The motorcade was awesome and fun.  The two medical guys were great and kept me on my feet (literally).  The towns we went through were supportive and warm and welcoming.  What an amazing event!

Will I do it again?  I hope so!  Not for a while because I have other goals to achieve first.  But when I go back I'll go back with an eye for reaching the top of the podium.  That will take a lot of special training.  And Tatiana and Irina are absolutely amazing.  But it's good to have goals and dreams and things to make you keep stretching your limits.

If anyone has questions about anything having to do with the race let me know!  I will do my best to answer.  Thank you again everyone who supported through donations, especially Susquehana Printers, US Centurions (Rob Robertson) The Gwendolyn Show, Willow Tree Massage (Janelle Malia) and Mountain View Mobile Homes! (it's the most expensive race I've ever participated in due to the van and the length and all that) Thank you to those who bought shirts, told jokes during the race and for the amazing comments.  Knowing there were so many people behind me and cheering for me helped me through the rough patches.

And most of all, thanks to Dave.  I wouldn't have made it without him.  From all the miles he walked with me to knowing what to say when and what not to say when.  Knowing what I like to eat and knowing when he had to say eat this whether you want to or not, he was my rock.  I'm one super lucky gal.

Church of Joan of Arc