How did the team meet?
Romain: The team met in June; the four of us (Florian, Baptiste, Claude and myself) got together for a team-building day.
On the agenda: a run (15 km), a barbecue, drinks, but above all, organising the race on the day itself—especially logistics, race strategy and, more broadly, organising the race weekend.
What do you need to prepare?
Florian: We have to fill in a route sheet where we indicate who does which relay, at what pace. With this data, we get an overall race time, and the organisers can then tell us our start time on the day.
What training did you follow?
Florian: On race day, what matters most is our endurance. To work on it, we of course did some running—during lunch breaks and after work for longer outings. But as we are big cycling fans, we wanted to focus our efforts on the bike. In particular, it allowed us to cover longer distances over longer periods while being less taxing on the joints.
Romain: Personally, I did short and long races (between 5 and 26 km trail running). Because of a knee injury mid-year, I had to slow down my running, but I was able to rely on cycling and hiking to stay fit, always keeping in mind the goal of lining up at the start of the Run Mate.
Florian: As for me, I kept running by taking part in a few trail races, running at lunchtime and in the evening with Romain. I also alternated with cycling training; I went away for 4 days to climb Mont Ventoux from all sides.
Romain: With Florian, we took on another challenge in June: completing the triple ascent of Puy Mary, a mountain pass in Cantal (which Tour de France fans will know!). We wanted to take on this challenge to test our mental strength and see our progress on the bike. On the clock: 130 km – 7 hours of cycling – and a bit (a lot) of elevation gain, but above all, a lot of enjoyment! Thanks to that, we gained confidence for the next challenge: the Run Mate!
The race is fast approaching—what are the final preparations?
Florian: We will have to put the bike aside and get back to running 100% in order to be able to cover 60 km in total, in relays of 10/12 km.
The idea is to run regularly in short sessions of 45 minutes to 1 hour, but to do it as many times as possible during the week to get our bodies used to repeated effort.
A final word?
Romain/Florian: To finish, we would like to thank the 5th member of the team, the man behind the scenes: Julien, who will drive the truck throughout the event and will be our moral and logistical support—A BIG THANK YOU to him.
And another BIG THANK YOU to Pharea, who is supporting us in this adventure!
We hope to rise to the challenge and enjoy the race immensely.
See you at the Run Mate!
