Nice-Cannes marathon

Should you be a regular reader of my blog, you may have noticed that I’ve mentioned the Nice-Cannes marathon a few times over the past few months. As a result of the completed Nice half-marathon back in May, me and Sami foolishly decided to embark on the grand-daddy of running competitions – the full marathon. Over time, we even managed to recruit Pete and Hannu, two other Finns, to join us.

So, after months of practice, the big day was finally upon us. Except – not for me :-( As a result of trying to show off for Mathilde’s dad a few weeks ago during a practice session, I did my knee in rather badly. I did manage to get back into practicing form after a couple of week’s worth of rest, but alas, in the end the knee gave in again. So no marathon for me, at least this time around :-(

But of course we were still there, in front of the Hippodrome in Cagnes-sur-Mer, to cheer my fellow Finns on. So who was to win of the dynamic trio? Sami has the advantage of having completed a marathon the year before (in Stockholm), but his practice sessions have mostly involved swinging a golf club. Hannu was keeping a low profile (only wanting to finish the race), but had managed to do the most practicing. On the other hand his last-minute preparation had been hampered by a sore back. Pete had not kept a low profile (that just wouldn’t be in his nature ;-) and had impressed during the pre-race practice. So perhaps Pete was the slight favourite of the evenly matched lot.

We were there well in time to cheer the lads on. The first to arrive were Sami and Pete, running by the sea with a look of cool confidence and fierce determination on their faces. So no problems there, they all looked in good shape – although we noted that they would have to increase the pace a bit if they wanted to reach a time of 4:00-4:30 (which had been mentioned in the pre-race speculations). Hannu followed just a couple of minutes later – his face calm and composed as always. We were later informed that all three made it to goal, with commendable times of 04:55:37 for Pete, 05:02:19 for Sami and 05:10:16 for Hannu respectively. They all did better than me, anyway ;-).

We still had other duties for the Sunday – as today was Father’s day in Finland. Mum and dad kindly invited us for dinner at their flat in Antibes – and we gladly accepted. So we spent a very pleasant afternoon there, starting with aperitifs on their balcony (basking in the southern sun – which was back after way too many days of rain) and continuing with a very tasty meal, finishing off with a very tasty Tiramisu alla Turtiainen.