Cross de L'hopital

Today, after an intense regime of training (i.e. no training at all), I ran in the 19th Cross de l'hopital. Franck had run it last year, and this year tried in earnest to organize other people from work to go. As a result, we were quite well represented. I had planned on training for it, but only succeeded in running once, a few weeks ago. Since it was only 7 km, I was not very worried, and even less so given that it was a benefit race that no one in our section would be taking too seriously! While we were milling around the start line, I heard the name "Bernard Thévenet" several times, and finally realized that it was because he was announcing the race. I did not actually know who that was, but it turns out that he is a Tour de France winner from the mid seventies.

It was a beautiful, but cold day, and the pace was quite easy. Franck was wearing a fantastic set of gigantic red glasses with blue lenses, and a red mohawk, so it was very amusing running with him. Peoples faces would light up as he would pass by, and you would see photographers along the course scanning aimlessly through the crowd, see Franck, and then start madly snapping pictures. I'm sure he will be well represented on Flickr.

I rode my bike to and from the race. At 26 km, getting there was much longer than the race itself, but it was a nice day to be cruising along the side of the Isére.