Mythical Marseille-Cassis! But also tough, gritty, boisterous, crowded, unique, beautiful, frustrating Marseille-Cassis [to the image of the city]! While in CIRM, I had once the opportunity to receive a bib at the last minute but did not catch it. And last year, my daughter moved to Marseille from Fort-de-France the very day of the race. This time, we managed to both get a bib despite being far in the waiting list. And I even got an entry in the -1:20 starting sas, thanks to my Pegasus time. (For which I wore the 1944-2024 celebration tee-shirt!)
My daughter, her friends and I left our rental in Les Goudes under the pouring rain with bleak prospects for later and by the time we had reached the starting line, the rain had stopped and there were only a few drops along the race, while the wind was in our face most of it. The #1 difficulty in this race is the steep climb to the Gineste Pass, overlooking the Luminy campus at 326m, which made me (over?) cautious in reducing my pace for the second half. But since I reached the 10km mark in more than 45mn, it was too difficult to catch up with the delay to reach 1:22 for the finish line, even when going down several kms under 3’45”. I was also surprised that many runners (142!) passed me on the second half given that speed. In the end, I was way too far from the third runner (1:22:59) to expect any miracle. Congrats to my daughter Rachel, who did reach her 2 hour mark as her first long distance race! And looking forward another internship of her’s in the Phocean city to repeat the experience.
