 So, just before we get started, I want to say a massive thank you to everyone who sent messages of support, commented on my Strava, messages on Facebook, messages on YouTube. I think I've had more comments and messages from people for this particular run than perhaps any other run I've done, so massive thanks for your support. So this video is going to be a complete breakdown of my Paris marathon 2023. We're going to go through the whole race from start to finish. We're going to talk about my nutrition, hydration, what kit I wore. So we're two days post-marathon now and recovery looks like one day off where I actually walked about 10 miles with the kids around Paris. We're still in Paris until about Thursday, so it's Tuesday today, I just thought I'd come out for a little light jog. So my start time for the Paris marathon was pretty early, where you were due to go off about quarter past eight in the morning. So I got up at six a.m. and I had porridge and coffee and complan, like a, like, like a hule or it's like a protein meal and a drink thing as well. So that was my breakfast, just porridge, coffee and a complan. I'm not a massive fan of the flatlay. See, you won't find me like laying out all my clothes and all my kit nice and neat and taking a photograph of it and putting it on Facebook. Everyone does that, so no, I don't bother, but I did have all my stuff ready to take in the morning and a big bag, because although the temperature was good for running, I knew that it would get very cold afterwards. So I had a bag full of a complete change of clothing. So I could put that on once I finished the race. Drop bag for the Paris marathon is at the finish line, so it doesn't go anywhere. You just put it at the finish line and it stays there until you finish. So let me tell you about the kit that I was wearing for the marathon. Nothing particularly special and I did explain it in the video I did the day before the marathon, but anyway, it will go through it anyway. So my cap here, my white cap just helping to keep the sweat off my face and often the hair out of my eyes, but quite short hair at the moment. So that's not an issue. I had my Zwift vest, so I was running with or we had a group of people from Zwift join us in Paris and lots of different times. So we didn't necessarily run together. Some people did, but so I was wearing my Zwift vest, which I feel very comfortable in anyway. It's light, it's breathable, doesn't chafe. I didn't carry a backpack. I didn't carry my phone with me. I was wearing a chest strap for heart rate. I always like to look at my heart rate afterwards. I don't look at it during the run, but after the event, I like to look at what my heart rate was. So I wore a chest strap. It's my Garmin HRM Pro. I was wearing the compression shorts that you see me wear on so many videos, along with running underwear, I think from Kalenji. In Jinji socks, those are the toe socks. If you do get in Jinji socks, make sure you get the mid-weight ones because the light ones, I find my toe pokes through them really easily. So, mid-weight in Jinji socks. And of course, on my feet, the carbon-plated shoes I've been wearing for a little while now. Not exactly new. I've done a couple of races in them. The Sorkany and Dorfin elites, which are just lovely. So fast, so cushioned, so stable. So I really, really like them. So I chose them over my vapor flies, version one. So I left the flat at around quarter seven, planning to meet my mate Marcus at about quarter past seven at the Arc de Triomphe. And then we walked down to Bag Drop. Bit of a queue at Bag Drop, a little bit worrying that we were losing time because we had to get into our pens, but we made it into Bag Drop and then walked the short distance up from the finish line and down to the start line on the Champs Elysees. Now, like all other big city marathons or marathons where there's a lot of people taking part, you are divided into waves and it's all the way down the Champs Elysees from the Arc de Triomphe at the top, all the way down to the start at the bottom. So you've got the elite runners that go up first, obviously. Then you've got VIPs and invited guests in another little section at the front. Then you've got the three hour lot. So that was myself and Marcus at the front in the three hour group. Then it extends all the way back, but even within the pens, you are set off in groups. So there are so many people in the three hour pen, the 330 pen, that they are divided up as well and you're sent off separately. And you're also sent off at different sides of the road. So on the left hand side of the road, one little group will go. And there's about a minute between each group starting. And here we are look on the Place Charles de Gaulle with the Arc de Triomphe here. And the Eiffel Tower, just the top of the Eiffel Tower sticking out up there. So this is where everyone starts to congregate and then moves down Champs Elysees over there to the start of the race. And I have to say I was quite nervous at the start line. In fact, I started to get nervous at a good couple of days before knowing what I was planning on trying to make myself too. So I was standing on that start line with confidence, but with I guess an appropriate amount of nerves that you should really have to get you going before a big race like that. There was a little bit of confusion when it came for us to start. Marcus and myself were pulled right to the front of the starting pen. And the people standing in front kind of moved away. And some runners started running. And then a group of officials go and said, no, no, no, no, no, wait, wait. So we waited and then the gun went off and off we went. Now we had a three hour pacer just in front of us. So I thought, okay, let's just start easy, start sensible and stick behind the pacer for a kilometer or so. Now the pace for a three hour marathon, I don't know what you work in, but I generally tend to work in kilometers. So it's about 416 per kilometer. In miles that's around 650 per mile, 14.1, 14.2 kilometers per hour. But I wasn't going for three hours. From the outset, my plan had always been to try and beat my PV, which is just under three hours. But then a few weeks ago, having chatted to a few different people, my goal changed to try and get 255. And it was interesting to see how fast the three hour pacer went off because he was not going at three hour pace. He was going quite a bit faster than that at the start. I know that because I was actually looking at my watch for the first part of the run. I just wanted to be sure that I was going at the right pace. And yet the three hour pacer was going at around 255 pace. Obviously, one really important thing to remember about running a marathon is it might be 42.2 kilometers or 26.2 miles, technically, but when you actually run it in real life, it's gonna be a bit longer. It's always gonna measure a bit longer, almost always. So your pacing strategy needs to incorporate the fact that you might have to run two, three, four, 500 meters longer than the marathon. And that can be two or three minutes. And if you're trying for sub three hours or sub four hours, whatever it might be, and you're gonna be right on the cusp, those two or three minutes are gonna make all the difference. So I stuck with the pacer for about three kilometers. Now, either I sped up or he slowed down to a proper three hour pace. And I eventually kind of started to move ahead of him. By this point, I'd lost Marcus as well. We'd started together, but he knew that I was gonna be going a little bit quicker. So I went off ahead of the three hour pacer. So you run along the Rue de Rivoli in Paris and around through the Louvre. And then you get to 5K. And 5K is where I checked my watch and made sure I was on pace and doing okay. And then I decided to try not looking at my watch for at least the next five kilometers. So at seven kilometers, we hit Bastille and the July column, rounded the July column and headed off towards Bratavansan. Just before Bratavansan, which is a big park with a beautiful chateau, I hit 10K, looked down at my watch, 42 minutes. So pretty much bang on where I want it to be. And I decided things were going well. I didn't need to look at my watch again, just maintain pace, keep going and push through the park. Now the Paris marathon is not flat. There are definitely some undulating sections. And going into the park is one of those sections where you do climb going into the park a little bit. But then coming back out of the park around 15 kilometers, you do descend. So I made my way past 15K, did look at my watch at 15K just to glance and check. Things seem to be okay. Remember if you saw my video the other day, talked about nutrition a bit and that I wouldn't be having anything to eat or drink. Well, that was the case. Still up until 15 kilometers, I had nothing to eat, nothing to drink. Gels just made me feel really sick. And I didn't need any water, it wasn't hot. If it was hot, yes, I'd be drinking, but cold weather like it was, it was cool. Not freezing, but it was cool. I didn't need anything to drink. And that meant I could avoid the melee around the aid stations as well. Just run right around the outside and not even worry about it. Quite often there's bottles strewn all over the floor. You risk standing on one, falling over, tripping up, just hitting another runner on the way through. It can be a nightmare at those aid stations when there are loads of people. So between 15 kilometers and halfway, you've turned back on yourself and you're coming back into Paris now. And this is where things went, if anything went wrong at all during the run, this is where things went a little bit wrong. See, I'm not really that experienced at pacing without looking at my watch. I like to think I can generally work out what speed I'm doing within reason, but 15K into the marathon. And I decided not to look at my watch again until halfway. What I didn't realize was, from that point, I started to slow down each kilometer. And because I wasn't looking, I slowed down just a little bit too much. So when I got to halfway, I had a little bit of a shock because I hit halfway in one hour, 28 and a half minutes. And I really wanted to be there in one hour, 27. So I was a good minute and a half slower than I wanted to be at that point. The good thing was though, I wasn't slowing down because I was tired. I was slowing down because I just wasn't concentrating and I was being lazy. So as soon as I realized that, I sped up. I did take some water at one of the aid stations around about halfway, just after halfway, grabbed a bottle, quick sip of water, chucked it in one of the big bins. They're very keen on their recycling and the Paris Marathon. And I chucked it in one of the big green bins that they provide. So we've come back into the city now, getting on for 25 kilometers. And we dropped down to the banks of the River Seine and run along the Seine for the next few kilometers. And this is where you'll find the infamous tunnels of the Paris Marathon. So it starts with this one big, long tunnel that used to be for cars, but it's now been pedestrianized so you can walk through it. But obviously it's closed anyway for the Paris Marathon. So it's about a kilometer or so long and there's a little climb out of that tunnel. And then you've got three other shorter tunnels, all of which have a steep little climb out of them. And on tired legs, if you are knackered at the end of the Paris Marathon, those climbs are awful to do. Really horrible. So I hit 30 kilometers feeling great actually, feeling really good. And I met my brother-in-law. He was standing by the side of the road at Place de la Concorde. And he gave me my banana and my drink. Purdies, I don't know if you've heard of purdies, but it's a very nice fizzy drink. And I had some of that. I didn't eat all of the banana, about half the banana. And a few sips of the fizzy drink. But I didn't need all of it. Honestly, my confidence was so high at this point because I was on time. I knew I was going to be under three hours as long as I kept pace. And I didn't feel like I was going to drop my pace. So you know that feeling sometimes when you get to around about 20 miles in and everything just got, you can feel yourself slowing down. You can feel the energy drained from your legs. You can feel your head go. None of that was happening. And you keep waiting for it to happen, don't you? It just sometimes, you know, one out of 20 races, that doesn't happen and you just feel great. And I just felt great. And it's just kept going. So they've actually changed the route of the Paris marathon towards the end of the run. We used to spend a long time going through the Blois de Boulogne Park and it was a little bit empty, a little bit sparse. You know, with only about three or 4K to go, there weren't really very many crowds. So they've changed the route. You just spend a little bit of time in the park now. Then you come back out into the main city streets and it's much more exciting, loads more support. So that was really good. And I just felt absolutely superb as I ran through the last three or four kilometers speeding up as I went, which is awesome at the end of a marathon. Although I certainly know one person who'd say I shouldn't be speeding up at the end of the marathon. You should be so spent. You should have run so hard that you can't possibly speed up at the end of your marathon. And the last kilometer of the Paris marathon this year was pretty much all downhill. Just power down as hard as you can, round the corner and then up to the finish. And I crossed the finish line in two hours, 55 minutes and 42-ish seconds. Now I can't say it was an absolutely perfect race. There were one or two things that probably I should have done differently. And I may have got under 255 if I had been a bit more on it in the first half of the race. However, really it couldn't have gone, it couldn't have gone much better. The only other minor disappointment was that my camera died about 35K. And so I didn't turn it on again until the very end. And I just got a couple of seconds just after I crossed the finish line. But yeah, I didn't get as much film as I was hoping to. But between us, I think Victoria and myself have got enough footage to make a short film. So the Paris marathon film will be out in a few days time hopefully. Just a final quick word on nutrition. Look, you know, okay, most people take gels when they run a marathon. And is that because everybody else takes gels? Is that because that's what the advertising tells you you should do? I don't know. All that sugar going into your body. No wonder so many people have stomach issues when they run because you're just putting all this awful sugar into your system and it can't digest it quick enough. And it just gets stuck there in your stomach and you throw up. What good is that? Look, I ate a good breakfast beforehand. Yes, I'm used to running on empty. I'm used to running and burning those fat stores that I have. But it means that when I run, I can still run fast. I mean, if you wanna do a three or a four hour marathon, you know, I can run a three hour marathon on nothing but half a banana. And all it is is going out regularly fasted because it teaches your body to burn its inherent fat stores. That's all it is. So if you do find you're throwing up everywhere when you're taking gels, then why not just try something different because you don't have to take gels to run fast. If you'd like to watch last year's Paris Marathon video, then click that link right there. That'll take you to it. Thank you so much everyone for all the support you've given all the messages of congratulations as well. Really meant a lot. It's really made me feel good. So thank you very much guys. And we'll see you on the start line next time. Bye bye.