16th Semi-Marathon de Paris

All ready to go Don't cross lady - she is not stopping! Hotel de Ville	It's over - phew. I think the pictures tell a better story than the words.  It was a good, hard race.  Starting positions were well marked off: unlike Auckland - where walkers, half , and full-marathoners are all lumped together at the start regardless of ability. We decided to set a steady pace of 6 min/ kilometres and stay together for the whole race. This gave me a bit of a chance to take some photo's, although I still don't have the shutter timer worked out properly. We ran into the centre of Paris, around Hotel de Ville, back along the Seine and around the woodland area surrounding Château de Vincennes. Just about every kilometre of the race they had bands playing, calypso drummers or brass bands.  While the course was quite wide it never really thinned out - you could run freely but had to be careful not to knock anyone over. We went through the finish line and straight back to the Metro to get home to relieve the baby-sitter.  Amelie, the babysitter, was lovely and very good with the kids. Greg, you would be interested that she is in her 3rd year studying towards becoming a chiropractor, it is also 6/7 years in France.	Where's the start line? Ah, The Start Line, 10 mins after the gun. Along the Seine Half way Ange!
		Some of the bands.

This guy on the left ran the whole race on stilts!! Check out his stride length.

I am missing a picture for this slot.  I do have a good one that could go here but then I'll have to change the caption on the picture to the right to read: "but I wasn't looking"	I just asked if you wanted to pick up the pace a bit!
10 metres to the finish line	Getting close
Finished!	Well done Team Bisset
Ange's first race medal	Break's over - lets head to the Metro.