Before y’all throw a hissy fit, just hear me out.

Yeah, I just liked that phrase as a title for this post.

For reference, here is the elevation profile from the GPS data for the Paris Marathon 2007:

Looks to me like it isn’t really all that much more “difficult” than The Big Woods Half .

But now I’m looking at that 13.1 mile mark and thinking about Paris 2007 …

Yeah, I’m looking at that half way mark and how I was ready to throw in the towel . Then there was the old French guy prodding me on. I so wanted to find him again. I wanted a photo with him. I so wanted to thank him. Sally brought me to this point of running the marathon. Sally carried me though the training . Toots carried me through the end. But if it weren’t for this old French guy patting me on the back…at mile 13(+)…referring to me as the maillot jaune…I was ganna walk off that damn race , go back to our apartment in Paris, and die. Ok, not die…but you get the point.

So, to nameless old French guy…Merci.

An I think I might have come up with a tattoo for myself.

XIII

‘nuff said …almost…

I like to say, this is what you should watch out for. This is what you’re likely to screw up. If you do screw it up it’s no big deal. In fact, I expect you to screw this up the first, and the second, and even the third time.

-Anthony Bourdain