Lightning and thunder this morning 15 to 6 am breakfast, before a 2 hour drive back wipers rain sweeping a not very strong but continuous .
Arrived at Jard sur Mer, near Les Sables d'Olonne, and more specifically in the small town of La Vinière, it rains almost over. Quite a collection of numbers in the world, half local and half tourists and sports a nice platoon takes a little way into the marsh over 1.4 km away in small strides departure. I talk quietly with Marina Roux Brioux club, which will be the first female and 29th at 1 hr 13 scratch later.
is taken up this little stone path, enough stock anyway, but we move quickly on the embankment separating the access channels to the sea and river. Where everything changes, a pleasant smell of dill scents the air, but on the ground the legs of cattle Vendéen have left holes in the ground who joyfully invite sprains, so maximum concentration and light feet are recommended.
This flat trail as the hand (perhaps 30 m in altitude, in all) becomes very difficult to finish. A study is made of mud: mud sliding like thin ice, mud, deep well, kind of sucker, mud loving soles which trainer 500 g each stride.
I dwell a little on the 2nd model after 20 minutes of racing, I'm losing my left shoe. When I say "I lose", it literally (if one can talk sense with the feet and hands in 10 or 15 cm black glue). So my shoe is stuck somewhere and my left foot is sock. To find my pump, I have searched with two hands in a good mud (it seems it's good for the joints). To finish my circus, I can not undo the knot of the lace, also drowned in the mud and I put my shoe like this directly, we'll see ... All it cost me 2 or 3 minutes, and then I'm off to a slow pace, a little demotivated and not poorly decorated in shades of brown-black.
slip by slip, one arrives at the first ford (there are 4). This is not a small stream, its just an arm of the sea, 40 m to do with the brackish water at mid-thigh. Well, it's refreshing and above all it washes, it already is, because the smell is not Chanel. (At least that has a Chanel perfume between mud and sea). Some spectators out of the water we encourage: "vasi, vasi!". It makes me marshes.
To change the different types of mud, one arrives in the sand. It does not slip, but we will not say it raises the average ... A big mile beach, sand and pebbles, a little hill to climb and then a path through the woods on sand still more or less hard.
After 3 more delegates (the latter is shorter, do not push it anyway), a small series of ditches, between 2 and 3 meters deep, although steep, with the last still a good thick mud at the bottom. I avoid jumping to not repeat the episode of the lost shoe, and the banner finish is in sight, 700 m.
1 h 22'26 and 78th of 157 runners on 15-pin ... I feel like I have done the double!
