Parkrun de la Ramée, France, 7th January 2017

Alice Vialard sends us this tale of parkrun à la francaise:

As promised to Sumanth and Tom, last Saturday I woke up at 7.00 and drove to Tournefeuille, a suburb of Toulouse in Southern France to the 37th parkrun de la Ramée. After a beautiful drive of 1h30 with the sun rising and the view of the Pyrenees in the background, we arrived at the park of La Ramée under the frost and met with my friend Emilie. Despite being the coldest morning of the year with a -7 degrees, 14 other runners took the start (out of 5 parkruns in France, 2 were cancelled due to the cold). The runners included 4 ladies, 2 children, and a dog and were 70% british. It was a completely flat course that ran along a bucolic frozen lake and took us into a path in the woods, and back to the lake. At the finish of the “ le footing”, as they call it in French, coffee and tea were served and franglish chit-chat were in order. Interestingly, the results were given by alphabetic order rather than time, which suits me very well: as A-lice I made it first, but by time I made it to the 9th place (but first of the 4 ladies!).

Pictures are courtesy of my Mam who kindly agreed to join me in this adventure, although she still thinks it a bit silly.