Paris 2024, Day 3 -- Marathon Pour Tous pre-race

Time has almost arrived. I returned to the hotel room by approximately 5pm and took advantage of a little rest as well as doing a little bit of prep work pre-race.

My hotel roommate had posted a meet-up in a Facebook Group that he runs, for us to grab dinner at a noodle place that I had found that was about 2 blocks from our hotel. It looked really good online. However, unbeknownst to us, because of no information provided on their website on this score, they were closed for the remainder of the month. (Pretty typical in France to take much or all of August off.) Damn! One benefit for no one having RSVP'd to this particular meet-up, we didn't need to worry about informing anyone of our back-up, which we hadn't yet figured out.

After a few minutes, he found a ramen place about 5-10 minute walk away. Nice and easy. He wound up getting a ramen dish, and I wound up getting both a chicken gyoza and a pork appetizer, as well as a side dish of noodles; I didn't want to have ramen as having hot soup on a hot day is not something that appeals. And, like so many places in Paris, there was no air conditioning in the restaurant -- it was wide open to the outdoors. (sigh)

Once we finished dinner, we went back to the room to finish our respective preparations. I wound up finishing first, and headed on out, as my roommate advised he expected it might take him a while longer.

When I arrived at the correct Metro stop for the Left Luggage area (a.k.a., bag drop) I started in the direction of seemingly everyone else (typical marathon lemming behavior). There was absolutely no signage at all, so I asked a policeman and an Olympic volunteer. They advised that I proceed on the *other* side of the street from where I was, because of closures further up that would prevent going where we needed. While it didn't sound right compared to my pre-written instructions, I complied. Silly me.

Along the way, there was a lady from Toronto who was also trying to get the Left Luggage area who tagged along with me. In a few blocks' time, we discovered that what I had been told was wrong. In fact, it was that positioning that prevented us from going where we needed. So, we backtracked the few blocks to get to the proper side and make our way to the area. Not a huge deal, as we had PLENTY of time.

Then we finally got to the area and easily found which bus (sorted by bib number) we needed to drop our respective bags for later pick-up. The directions that we had previously were unclear about whether these buses would actually be moving after the start of the race to another location (which is how I had read it) or staying in place (which is actually what happened).

Following the crowd, I started moving towards the corrals, despite the fact that the instructions implied that the corrals would not be opening early. At worst, I would be stopped at some checkpoint beyond which we couldn't go until a set time. Right?

Along the way, I stopped for a quick photo with the Olympic mascot and MPT logo:

What I didn't appreciate until just now, in putting together this blog entry, was the fact that that sign was something we would actually exit through from our corrals to turn and land at the starting point in front of the Hotel de Ville.

Rather, my attention was solely on trying to get to the corral itself. It was INSANELY crowded.

Alas, these photos don't do it sufficient justice - especially since at this point I had made it into the corral. That was no small feat. The area between this high fence you see in the foreground and the "far" side of the walkway people are cramming down is *maybe* 15 feet wide. And, as you can see, there are trees within this space -- which also have large low-fenced areas around them (to prevent people from trampling the greenery immediately at the base of the trees) -- which wound up occupying maybe half of the width in question.

Oh, and did I mention that there was zero control of who was permitted to come down this narrow strip of pavement to get towards the eight corrals? That's right. Not only were up to 20,000 participants being funneled in this narrow space, but for many of them, friends and family were joining them all the way to the corral entrance, at which point the non-participants would turn around and come back the opposite direction. (!) So we had two-way traffic of thousands of people in this narrow area. UGH!

I was so livid at the insanely stupid logistics of this all, which was only compounded even further by the situation shortly after I actually got INTO my corral.

Early on, I managed to avail myself of a fellow runner to take a photo of me with Notre Dame in the background.

Soon enough, though, the corral really started to fill up. Within this relatively small corral, not only were we expected to fit 2500 runners, but they also had two large dumpsters, 1 or 2 porta-potties, and several urinals and women's urinals (a nice idea I've not seen at any of my previous 74 marathons). It was ridiculously cramped, and people were perpetually and gradually shimmying and pushing their way forward. I saw no reason to be bothered, so I just hung back on the side next to the fence and the first of the dumpsters. I was ticked off enough at the whole thing and not at all energized by the fact that I was about to run this marathon that I recognized I had zero adrenaline coursing through my system -- wholly unheard of for me so close to gun time.

Amusingly enough, I noticed 4 or 5 women huddled around the space between the two dumpsters, and one of which was holding a reasonably sized blanket, or some such. In turn, there were 2 or 3 of them who would enter the space and crouch, while the others strategically positioned themselves and the blanket to block the view of anyone nearby within the corral. (Never mind the fact that there was an opening on the other side visible from those outside of the corral.) Clearly they didn't want to wait on the line for the porta-potty or female urinal. (Based on comments I overheard from others, the female urinal would NOT have been what they needed.) That they didn't have any porta-potties between the back check and the vicinity outside of the corrals certainly didn't help matters.

Eventually, 9pm arrived, and the first corral was sent off. By about 9:10pm (when my hotel roommate's corral was sent off), it was clear that people were able to start moving more normally, so I joined the flow. En route, I noticed additional obstacles that made everything all the more cramped earlier -- multiple mini-stages within the corral where there were a couple of people dancing, presumably in an effort to amp up the crowd. And some cordoned off area for something similar. It was just about sunset (which fell at 9:15pm), and we had made our way through that MPT logo sign and turned to get in front of the Hotel de Ville. The music they were playing was BLARING very loudly. Sometimes, I don't have a problem with that - especially if it's a good, reasonably high-energy song; I get it. However, at this point in time, it was some obnoxious, profanity-laden very-clearly-American rap song (damned if I know who or what song). That mercifully ended (though not soon enough), and some appropriately dramatic instrumental started up. NOW I was ready to go. NOW I could hype myself up and get some of the adrenaline going.

LET'S GO!