madITrunner on tour

And here we go… I will be running outside of Ireland for the first time. Couldn’t imagine better place to start my ‘foreign’ runs than the marathon in Nice. Place where we keep coming back every year, relaxing during summer months. Now I can experience Nice in November and at the same time run the marathon…

Today (Friday probably will post that later) we have arrived in sunny Nice and after taking bus to our hotel decided to visit marathon expo without a delay. Do it ASAP was in our opinion best solution. After that we could be enjoying Nice. We have walked to the Promenade d’Anglais, picked my running pack with number (before expo adrenaline levels were already high so I have forgotten my voucher for picking up number). Plenty of snacks such as nuts, crisps and the strange ones like a jar of masala and Maggi chicken dish from a bag.
Next stop Expo! Plenty stands with gear and goodies plus ones promoting other marathons. At almost every stand you could sign up for a free entry draw and hope for the best. And what marathons you have here? At least 15 French ones (with one very interesting through vineyards and stops for wine tasting), great amount of Italian ones and more. Too bad that at least 5 of them will  take place on the May long weekend. Interesting ones are definitely: Copenhagen, Roma, Lausanne or Milano. I liked the shirt from Copenhagen and Quebec marathon so much that I have decided to spend 5 euro each on them. We have met couple of very interesting people at the Expo. I have even made friends with the promoter of Roma Marathon. At the end of the conversation we have invited each other for a visit in our countries – Maratona Roma is on the cards.
Tomorrow will start enjoying Nice like proper tourists but definitely will visit expo for a couple of minutes. Anyway, I’m on tour with My Wife now. Definitely not the last marathon outside of Ireland.

Second day was spent on relaxing and enjoying, visiting expo again, meeting friends and, to my surprise, advertising madITrunner brand. We went to expo again to check details about Prague Marathon. Unfortunately date of the run will not allow me to run and us to visit that beautiful city in 2015. We have met quickly with our friend from Rome. He is considering running the Connemara 100 miles. Will welcome him with open arms. We also met a promoter of the Treviso marathon. She was very persuading but unfortunately Rome was first on my list. Maybe next year. As you all know running outside of Ireland is very interesting and exciting. Meeting new people, discovering new places but the race and the whole trip is very costly. After expo we had time to ”inject” some carbs before the race. Large plate of pasta for lunch and coffee followed up by ice cream on the way back from catch u with an old friend.
When I’m writing about the past day it seems that we were just relaxing but at the end of the day GPS has showed over 10 km walk. Not too shabby for a slow day… Forgot to mention that some of the vendors have recognized me on the second day. They remembered the buff with madITrunner logo. Nice, my promo efforts are working. One more thing, we purchased signed reproduction of painting representing a marathon runner…

Sunday was a marathon day. So not much has happened. We had Dublin weather in Nice for almost 1/3 of the run and well after. It has stopped raining around 8 pm, so there was no walking around town today. Just lunch and dinner. There was really nothing special about that day besides me running marathon in a very strange weather (for Nice). Tomorrow is last day before going back home.

Today we are going home. Weather still awful but we decided to have breakfast outside the hotel. That was great choice. After breakfast went for small walk before checking-out from hotel and heading up to the airport. While waiting in the departure hall you could hear constant buzz. Machinery? No, constant rain, not easing up. Wifey went outside to take a picture of very unusual weather. Now, we are on the plane heading up home.