Marathon Me

I have to work in Paris early next week, so I took the flight out Friday afternoon and landed in Paris about 11:30 am on Saturday; I picked up my car and headed towards Cheverny, France. I got the Hertz Never-Lost system so that I would be able to get around France, without which it could have been really ugly. I didn’t notice, however, that the option for ‘avoid toll-roads’ was checked and thus I added well over an hour to my trip. (On the way back I sensibly turned this option on in an effort to get “home” sooner). But I arrived a little over three hours later, and headed to the marathon expo. The expo was right off the grounds of Cheverny Chateau, which was really cool. I turned in my medical release form stating I was capable of running a marathon (something I had done 68 times previously…), grabbed my packet and was ready to head to the castle. In our packet we had a discount for visiting the castle, which being cheap I took advantage of.

It was pretty fun to talk around the grounds and imagine what it would be like to be super rich like that. My wife would totally love the gardens. I took several pictures of the Knights and swords and other medieval weaponry for my son.

On the grounds was a dog pen with the most dogs I’ve ever seen in one place in my life. There were a lot of children super “le excited” to see all the dogs get fed.

After touring the grounds I still had a couple hours before the pasta dinner and so I headed back to my hotel to try and catch a nap. As luck would have it I actually had a conference call back with the United States and so I spent my nap time on the phone. And so I stayed tres tired.

The actual Pasta Dinner was inside one of the secondary buildings at the Chateau. There were 7 or 8 fifty person banquet tables. I sat at a table and had no idea what was going on. I took three years of French in High School, two years of Spanish in College and I’m trying to learn Italian right now, so it basically means I can’t speak anything other than English very well.

The menu was quite interesting and I must say I was skeptical when they brought out potatoes and tuna fish in a sort of salad dish, but then came the breads and the wine and things were looking up. Once they brought over the prosciutto I knew it was going to be just fine. I’ve never had prosciutto at a pasta dinner, but I would like to see more of this in the future.

I met a very nice family at the dinner. The dialogue with their son went like this:

French Child: Le something I le don’t le understand
His Mother (helping me out): Where are you from?
Me: Texas
French Child: Ahh oui Texas! Le Bang bang!

Luckily for me Christopher had just finished up Texas week at school, so I showed the kids this picture of him:

Confirming in their minds everything they held to be true about Texas. Just doing my part for International relations, no need to thank me.

I also met a group of people with one lady who could speak English. So we talked about the marathon and she asked if Sunday would be my first marathon. I told her it would be my 69th. Much confusion ensued. She thought I was telling her my race number, or something else. Once she figured it out she translated to her group and I was met with “C’est Impossible”, “Non, Non” and other disbelief.

We agreed to meet before the start in the morning and wish each other luck. They asked for my email address so hopefully they will stay in touch. Good luck to everyone on the race tomorrow.

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Tags: General, Marathons //