We’ve just got back from Paris. It has been an interesting few days of conference, museums, sun, people watching, lots of walking and yes – a run. We were really aiming for two but somehow that didn’t happen. Although I was looking forward to running in Paris, the idea of running in the city wasn’t that appealing. After arriving on Tuesday evening we went for a little walk and found one of the running routes I had seen online. It was only about 5-10 minute walk from the hotel  – so a nice little warm up really. So Wednesday morning we got up and got ready to run. We walked towards the Jardin du Luxembourg and started our run at this rather odd looking fountain in the Jardin Marco Polo (according to Wikipedia it is the Fountain de l’Observatoire)

We went left along the garden/park. When we got right to the end, the gate wasn’t unlooked yet  (you can see the gate at the end of Jardin Marco Polo and the big ones to Jardin du Luxembourg in the first picture below)- there was someone just going round unlocking everything so we did a little circuit round that section and by the time we came round again the gate was open. I do quite like the turtles in the fountain even if the rest if pretty hideous – there was no water on yet when we went for the run but I’ve included one picture with water just for fun. At the end of Jardin Marco Polo, you need to cross a little road and then we entered Jardin du Luxembourg through the gates  and turned left to run clockwise round it (mainly because everyone else seemed to be running anti-clockwise). It was relatively flat with just a very very gentle slope in a couple of places and the gravel path all the way round was even and easy to run on. There were quite a few runners and I was quite surprised that they didn’t really bother me. Everyone was just doing their own thing and some were going quite fast and others were just plodding along – possibly even slower that we were. It was a spectcular place to run with the path taking you right in front of the Palais du Luxembourg, home of the French Senat and through the gardens which was nice. Here are a few pictures to give you a sense

I was too busy looking around to really think about running and it was quite warm and I wasn’t used to having to go round obstacles (usually metal chairs left randomly in the path) and other runners so it was quite slow. A pace of just over 13 minutes per mile but it was a good positive run around people so all good practice and doing two loops of the park before then heading back towards the hotel meant I got to see stuff I’d missed on loop one.

The second run didn’t happen because we slept in, bought a breakfast picnic and sat in the park rather than running round it. As far as excuses go we did pretty well because we decided that we were walking so many miles (we did walk most places just using the metro a couple of times) looking at the sights that we could get away with not running. As excuses go, this is one of our more plausible ones!

Just to be clear though – I’m nowhere near actually liking running as ‘a thing’. I’m doing it and I’m quite proud of myself for that but I am doing it because I want to raise money for Panthera, anything else is really just a bonus. So as a reminder of what this is all about here’s us in our Panthera t-shirts in a silly Paris selfie (do not get me started on selfie-sticks) and us training hard (ahem – celebrating Kath’s birthday, our run in Paris and my pretty successful conference).

Thank you to those of you who have already sponsored us – and for those of you haven’t, if you can please do so here –  we’d really appreciate the boost just before our first ‘race’ tomorrow – the Leeds 10km Run for All.