Huge disappointment with this favourite race of mine! It is unclear what caused my underperforming this time, since I had trained regularly for two months, with many long distance runs and several intensity ones, weekly. The temperature was mild, the constant wind none too strong, but I slowed down almost from the beginning… And could not keep up with the 1h30 pacers when they passed me 5km before the finish line (even though they were running faster than the 1h30 target!). Lack of rest the final week? A fast 12km bike ride to the Saint-Lazare train station the previous day (in order to avoid the nightmare of getting back to Caen train station on race day)? Too much weight loss the last two weeks? Too long a warm-up run the same morning? Need of gels mid-race? The most frustrating is that I would have ended first in the previous category (M5M).
My daughter, her friends and I left our rental in 
