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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2014 19:55:25 GMT
After all these years, I decided to take a look at the Paris Marathon this morning. Running around is not an activity that really fascinates me, but these events are so popular that they should not be ignored. The Paris Marathon this year had more than 50,000 runners registered. It was starting at 8:45 this morning, with the "handisport" participants leaving about 20 minutes earlier. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 6, 2014 20:19:44 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2014 4:29:14 GMT
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Post by patricklondon on Apr 7, 2014 9:01:35 GMT
Do you get the people doing it in comedy costumes of various sorts (and it's all for charidee, of course)? The London Marathon passes right by where I live (on the 18th mile, so a lot of people are looking rather the worse for wear by the time they get to us), and part of the fun of watching it (apart from being able to nip back indoors for whatever else one wants to do, and then back again to see what's happening in the race) is the variety of things people wear. Every year one of the wildlife charities has at least a couple of people in the most ungainly rhino outfits, one year there was a team of people tied together to make a "train", sundry advertising stunts (Marmite jars and beer bottles), cartoon characters, men in drag, ladies in tutus, more deely-boppers than you can count, and so on. I have done a couple of blog entries with photos, but maybe this year I should do a companion thread to this one! My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam" |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2014 9:40:30 GMT
There are a few costumes, but they are very rare compared to a lot of other cities.
I saw that registration is now open for next year's marathon. The first 5000 pay "only" 75€ to participate and then the fees rise gradually to a top fee of 109€ after 37,000. There were many complaints about the fees in Paris, but I don't know what other cities charge.
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Post by bjd on Apr 7, 2014 14:56:49 GMT
Friday's Le Monde said 50,000 people, but this morning's free paper in the Metro said 40,000, of whom 16,000 were foreigners.
Our apartment window is at Kilometre 6, so other than the first guys, there were already some walking (not many) and others definitely not looking fresh -- to the extent that my first thought was "this one will never finish". I watched nearly all of them -- only a few in disguise (not among the serious runners) and some groups of runners with a handicapped person in a kind of wagon that they took turns to pull.
Paris race prices are not very high, compared to prices in the States or Canada. In Canada, even ordinary 10K races cost over $50 to register for. It's several hundred $ for NYC.
And you only see "older" runners because marathon are not a young person's sport. Forbiddent to under 16 in fact -- that repetitive hitting the ground is bad for young muscles, tendons, etc. It requires a lot of endurance.
After the last of the race had gone by, I went to the store and behind the cleaning truck that was picking up the plastic water bottles, there was an overweight couple dressed as runners, with number bibs, walking holding hands. I guess they wanted to tell their friends that had done the Paris marathon.
I was also struck by the number of runners with smartphones with apps, earphones, etc. And a big American guy with a t-shirt with "Bonjour, y'all" written on the back.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 7, 2014 16:33:25 GMT
Actually, in 2013 the exact number of inscriptions allowed was 50,000. This year it was reduced to something like 42,700. I don't know why -- and it is the same for next year. There is a lottery for registration because there are many more requests than available numbers. I assume that a lot of people run part of the course unofficially without ever registering.
The nationality statistics for 2013 were, after the French of course, UK, USA, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Israel and Brazil. There were runners from 138 countries, representing 30% of the total participants. Finally: 79% men, 21% women.
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Post by nycgirl on Apr 16, 2014 16:24:56 GMT
These races are a lot of fun to watch. I always marvel at what the human body is capable of when I see the runners go by, especially the ones with disabilities.
Did you notice if security was especially high this year? It was airtight at NY's marathon last November, which contributed to me not even wanting to go. I'm glad the city took measures to ensure everyone's safety, but having to go through airport-like security to enter Central Park takes a lot of the fun out of it.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 16, 2014 16:38:49 GMT
I saw very little security where I was standing, but that just means that the real security was in plainclothes. The few people in police uniforms were just to redirect traffic or make spectators move back when a big group of runners was coming through.
I used to be really tuned into plainclothes security officers because one of my colleagues' husband was a police bodyguard for important personalities visiting France (he went skiing with Princess Diana, for example), then he became President Mitterrand's bodyguard, and since that period he has been one of the top security officers for various government ministers over the years. After several years with the minister of Defense, he is now with the minister of Agriculture, who isn't really at risk for much, so it is a cool job. Anyway, what I was going to say is that you can spot the security people in a crowd two main ways -- obviously they are mostly looking everywhere at the crowd and never at the 'event' or the 'personality' that people have gathered to see, and also even on the hottest days, they ALWAYS wear some kind of jacket due to their shoulder holsters.
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Post by patricklondon on Apr 17, 2014 9:48:10 GMT
I'm guessing the average farming protest with a huge muck-sprayer doesn't take a lot of spotting....! My blog | My photos | My video clips"too literate to be spam" |
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Post by nycgirl on Apr 17, 2014 18:22:16 GMT
Anyway, what I was going to say is that you can spot the security people in a crowd two main ways -- obviously they are mostly looking everywhere at the crowd and never at the 'event' or the 'personality' that people have gathered to see, and also even on the hottest days, they ALWAYS wear some kind of jacket due to their shoulder holsters. You'd be be good at spotting a terrorist, too, as that is also their M.O. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2016 12:25:09 GMT
I knew the marathon was today, but I had no intention of seeing it. I was riding a bike down the Canal Saint Martin to see if it would be filled by tomorrow when it is supposed to reopen, and it looked exactly the same as yesterday. Then I headed over to Place de la République to see if the "occupiers" were still there. There has been a small but determined group coming there for the last three nights to make a variety of political demands. The police clear them out every morning at 6 a.m. There were maybe about 15 people there planning an overthrow of the government and perhaps the world, but there did not appear to be any immediate danger. I continued down Boulevard Beaumarchais, sort of planning to continue on the Bercy to either 1) see a movie or 2) wander through the park. But as I approached Bastille, there was a police barricade: the marathon. So I figured that I would hang around for a little while. I got rid of the bike and found a vantage point. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2016 12:40:04 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2016 15:04:48 GMT
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2016 16:14:06 GMT
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Post by bixaorellana on Apr 3, 2016 16:33:43 GMT
To be perfectly honest, I almost didn't look at the latest addition to this thread, thinking it couldn't possibly interest me. To the contrary, the pictures are really exhilarating! What a great job of capturing movement and also individual expressions.
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Post by htmb on Apr 3, 2016 16:47:24 GMT
Kerouac's Tour de France experiences have paid off here!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2016 17:22:05 GMT
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Post by bjd on Apr 3, 2016 18:38:46 GMT
I'm glad to see that Parisians have finally learned how to encourage the marathon runners. A friend of mine who started by doing the New York marathon said the crowds there were great, all along the entire route, with music and encouragement. That was 16 years ago. A few years later she did Paris and said it was not fun since there were only crowds at the beginning and the finish, the rest was silence and no encouraging calls.
Today she actually ran the Connemara marathon in Ireland. I saw the total runners for the full marathon was about 3,000 and it's basically a road race -- quite different from Paris.
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Post by kerouac2 on Aug 12, 2020 17:08:09 GMT
The Paris marathon for this year was originally scheduled for April 5th. Obviously it was postponed, and the new date was 18 October. As time passed, that date was considered impossible, too, so the next proposal was 15 November. Today it was decided that the date is unacceptable as well because many professional runners are not available then. So the 2020 Paris Marathon was cancelled today. It was probably naive of the organising committee to ever think that it could take place since all of the other major world marathons have been cancelled.
I am not a big sports fans, but I have great sympathy for the participants and the organizers for which this year has been a nightmare.
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