Tinman wrote:
Benji:
Tell us about an interesting anecdote from any race that you ran in a foreign country, please. Thank you.
My first non-US marathon was in southern France in 1977. My wife and I (this was Barbara; my first wife) were doing a Eurrail pass self arranged tour basing our travels out of a Paris suburb where one of my uncles was living. I had arranged an entry to the Arvert Marathon via mail with an editor of Spiridon (a Swiss/French running magazine). It was a small marathon and I thought it would be fun.
Because of the way we were traveling around, I wasn't really eating the way I should have while preparing for a marathon. The pre-race meal the race treated me too was smoked mussels which didn't help my non-carboloading.
The race started and finished with 2 laps of the 400 meter track in Arvert. I took the lead at the gun and never saw another runner. At about 20 miles my lack of carbs came back to haunt me. I hit the wall. I had the sleepy/hungries and couldn't really think. Yet somehow my body kept moving at basically the pace it run the previous 20 miles.
As I got near the track, a press car 2/3's the size of VW bug came up along side me and asked how I felt. I responded that I was very, very tired. They told me I had a 2 minute lead just as I entered the track. I was so out of it, I didn't think I could run 800 meters and keep my lead.
I won in 2:22:47 with a 2:15 margin. They gave me a glucose tablet and I was fine. Moral-eat smart before the race and trust your body to run even on auto-pilot.