Sat, Oct 22, 2022 - 42K - 05:07:43
Bilbao Night Marathon
The original plan was for me to fly to Bilbao and run the Bilbao Marathon, but Hannah wanted to come with me in order to run the Bilbao Half Marathon, but also wanted to speak French so we decided to fly Berlin-Bordeux, spend a few days there, then take a bus down to Bilbao, run our races, then come back to Bordeux. But Hannah had to come back early to work, so she flew out of Bordeaux, but the plane didn't start, so she took a FlixBus back to Berlin (!) while I stayed on in Bilbao, then traveled alone back to Bordeaux where I flew back to Berlin the next day. 
 
So in all it was a nice vacation with French, then Spanish, then French. I realized how fluent I am in French, relieved to be back in France where I could speak full sentences and stay in conversation, unlike in Spain. Odd, even though I can read A2 an B1 texts in Spanish, and can communicate via writing in Spanish, understanding Spanish in the street is quite difficult. I would have to live there for a few months to break the barrier. 
 
The race itself was fun. Most of the runners did the 10K, quite a few did the half marathon, and it seemed only the hard core did the marathon which was two loops of the half marathon, which stayed pretty much within the small area of Bilbao itself. Even though we started at 19:00, the temperature remained 27°C for hours, up until at least 22:00 I would say. I received a message at 24K that Hannah had finished her half marathon (02:39:50), she sent me a photo of the medal so I knew what I was running for. I felt good the whole race, had one of my slowest marathon tims (05:07:43) but really enjoyed the run, no pain, lots of fans in Tapa bars who cheered us on as we ran by. 
 
The trip home was fun, FlixBus to Bordeaux and one more night there in the city, really interesting architecture there, and a large city, much larger than Bilbao. So that was marathon #31, looking forward to #32 next year, perhaps Berlin? perhaps Côte d’Azur? We'll see.