The final day, and it was fantastic! I went out relatively quickly in the cool morning air and around 2h in thought “well, if you can hold this pace you’ll finish in under 5h”. I managed it in 4:57:35.
Last night’s meal was some rockmelon, followed by a great lasagna, then cheeses and an apricot & yogurt cup. Was delicious. Sleeping arrangements were comfortable, sharing again with Fabrice. Our room had it’s entry & window facing the setting sun, leaving the room fairly warm. It cooled down just enough by lights out to be comfortable, and with the door left open I woke first to add a sheet and again around 4am for a blanket - pretty much perfect sleeping conditions. I recall that at the same time as adding the sheet I also swallowed some panadol as my hips were hurting from lying on my side. All in all though, a great night’s sleep was had.
We were up at 6.15am for breakast, I had my usual fare of three bowls of coffee and some cereal. The first group set out at 7.30 (only a very small group today), with the rest of us hitting the road at 8.30.
I stuck with a quickish group, everyone was cheerful and feeling positive about it being the final day. We ran through the town of Le Blanc, climbing a steep hill offering some great views of the city (for those who were willing to walk 20m off course to take a photo). We soon hit a “greenway” (old railway line) and it was delightful in the cool morning air to motor along through this section. After a few km we came back onto the roads and passed through Concremiers, crossed the bridge and started along farm roads while following the river (L’Anglin). There were several amazing buildings that we passed today, clearly a lot of history in this area!
Into aid station 1, I quickly loaded up some tailwind and then ran with Nitish (dutch) all the way to aid 2. He’s been quicker than me all week, and it taxed me a bit to keep up - but was just the motivation I needed to keep a steady pace. I found out that he had fallen over on the greenway and had hand and knee wounds - didn’t seem to slow him down too much though. We had a great chat and enjoyed some lovely quiet (and shaded) roads through to aid station 2.
I was through aid 2 pretty quickly, Jennifer had just left and I quickly caught her up and had a brief chat. I was still feeling really energetic so decided to head off on my own. Maintaining my earlier pace, I passed through the historic town of Angles-sur-l’Anglin, featuring a large medieval ruin. Gilles routed us well through the town, offering a great view of the ruins (and I really wish there’d been an opportunity to explore them).
By now it was starting to warm up, but I dug deep and maintained the same pace through to aid 3, our final aid station of the event. The volunteers had setup in a beautiful carpark, overlooking a river and some older buildings across the other side. I felt a little sad that this would be my last consumption of boiled egg, cheese on bread and the wonderful wafers and biscuits that I would leave every aid station with! As I’d arrived, Fabrice Pelligue was just leaving so I set my sights on trying to catch him before the end. It was 14k to go, and I calculated that i needed a steady 9kph to finish under 5h (and I needed a little bit of a margin, as due to a watch error at the beginning of the day I’d started the activity a little late - I figured it was around 1min, but wasn’t completely sure).
This final leg was pure grunt. It was, for the most part, exposed to full sun, and there was plenty of ups and downs, with the ups requiring some walking. At one hour to go I had exactly 9km left, so was on-track. Then with 40min to go there was 6min left… there was no margin for slacking off! I continued to push hard, and suddenly caught sight again of Fabrice. He was a good 300-400m in front of me. With 2.5km to go, I felt like I was starting to close the gap, but then he looked around and saw me and took off like a rabbit! Oh well. Was going up a hill at the time, and I saw Rene (with his dog Sheila) walking down the road - I made a gesture of throwing a fishing line out to catch Fabrice, knocked my hat off instead! Rene got a good laugh out of it, as did I.
Despite not being able to catch Fabrice, I was still determined to keep up the pace. With 2km to go I had about 15min to the finish, no letting up. And the sun wasn’t letting up either … oof. 1.7km … 1.5km … 1km … then I heard the sounds of “hop hop hop”, indicating a runner approaching the finished, and shortly the same words were repeated as I took the final turn into the campgrounds. Across the finish line, I’d hit my target, woohoo! My best effort for the week, averaging around 6:26/km, not bad for the end of an accumulated 300km over six days!
After enjoying a chat, some food, several cold drinks, I found our room for the night - it’s a huge apartment, thick stone walls, with couches, kitchen, nice cool tiles, and our own ensuite. Bloody marvellous. Once freshened up, I took a walk into the town, enjoyed some pastries, and toured the local church (world renowned, and UNESCO listed). Will shortly be heading to presentations, beers and then dinner.
Stats for today: 46.09km*, 4:57:35, 442m elevation (plus a little more that I missed at the beginning).