First the picture proof that I was there:
And here Emmanuel and Thomas:
It was a relatively cold morning at about 2°C when we met underneath the Arc de Triomphe. We made our way down to the starting area and got into our 3:45 zone. Fortunately there was no wind and no clouds so the sun warmed the temperature to about 13°C by midday.
Here are the stats http://connect.garmin.com/activity/294634443
My time was 3:31:26 which was a little slower than I wanted. Still, this was my 2nd or 3rd best time for the Paris Marathon. I was hoping to beat my 3:26 set at the Yvelines in 2005. I had no cramps or significant pains that hampered me.
Looking at the graphic of my pace you would think that I kept a steady pace. Actually, I was always changing pace to get around slower runners. Sometimes there were choke points whenever the streets were not wide enough.
Here is the graphic of the pace for each 5km split. This shows that my pace gradually got slower, not by much, but enough to miss my objective by a few minutes.
This performance was good enough to put me in 6762th place overall out of 40,108 runners. That’s out of the money…
And in the old man’s category (ages 50 – 55) I placed 728 out of 4968.