Race report by John Nicholson

What’s lovely about Striders race reports is that, unlike the Oscars, you don’t have to win, or even make the podium, to thank everyone who helped make it happen!

Absorbing the noise at the start in the magnificent Nefs des Machines de l’Île (home to Nantes’ famous mechanical elephant), I was thinking about the invaluable advice and encouragement I’d received from Striders over the preceding four months.  “Don’t go off too quickly”, “control your heart rate”, “stay fuelled and hydrated (especially as a diabetic)”, “get to 20 miles and see what you have left” and “you’ve already done the hard work in training – you’re ready and you can do this”!

If you’re one of the many Striders who helped embed those five golden mantras in my running brain, thank you! I was nervous, yes, but I knew I was finally ready for my first ever marathon after switching from GB Age Group duathlon.

The heart rate mantra proved crucial. Like London and Manchester the same day, Nantes was uncomfortably hot. By the 10k mark I realised that keeping to my 150bpm target was going to require running a good fifteen to twenty seconds a kilometre slower than in all my recent training runs. Plan A – the England Masters qualifying time of 4.30 (albeit, Nantes wasn’t a qualifying race) was already unlikely. So plan B – the 4:52 GFA for London 2026 – took over.

The course was a fascinating mix – an initial circumnavigation of the former naval dockyard on the Ile de Nantes (of which the Nefs des Machines was part) was followed by multiple crossings of the Loire and sorties into the city’s residential and commercial areas. The centrepiece was a lap and a half of Nantes’ historic squares, beautiful parks, the cathedral (outside only!) and some very attractive waterside stretches

 

It was on this (roughly 26k) middle section that the event really came to life. Excellent musical performances – both organised and from buskers – helped maintain that metronomic marathon cadence. So did vociferous cheerleaders at every corner, pavement cafe and square (including a very noisy couple who somehow managed to appear in at least six different locations)! Despite all this encouragement, along with my very disciplined fuelling regime and the water stations every 5km, the heat was really taking its toll. Keeping my heart rate in check led to the sad realisation that my pace was slowing further and I might not even make my Plan B target of a London GFA. That still left Plan C – to finish (and hopefully in under 5hrs)!

 

The last “did someone say this will be tough?” 6km was along one bank of the River Erdre while the finish was on the other – and this where that walking on water feeling came in. The organisers had installed a temporary 320m pontoon across the river purely for the race!  A pretty spectacular way to approach the finish, and an extremely welcome sight.

This unique biblical moment came immediately before a last cheeky little 400m rise to the finish in the main hall of the Parc des Expositions de Beaujoire. Nothing compared to the training terrain of Sheffield and the Peak District but a little inconsiderate after 42km! It was made much easier for me by a couple of familiar voices shouting me home – my wife’s whoops and my French niece’s very English expletive – recorded for posterity on her video – “You did it, you f…ing did it”! Yes, I did, and I’m proud of it. Four months’ training rewarded, my  Strider colleagues’ belief in me warranted, and a bucket list challenge ticked off. And I did break 5 hours

 

 

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