10KM Paris Centre with Nike
It's been a crazy month. Laura won the Sneakerball competition back in early September with her sneaker selfie so we headed to Madrid with Nike Sportswear for their party. The next weekend I went out with a group of fit chick friends to go and attempt the Adventure Race on the Isle of Man. The following weekend I headed out to Cornwall for an amazing Surf and Yoga retreat with Alibi Health Drink and Ride On Retreats. To top all the epicness off, last weekend, we went out to Laura's hometown for the 10KM Paris Centre race with Nike!
We love Paris so an invite to go there will never be turned down, especially to do the 10km race in the City Centre with Nike!
We hopped on the Eurostar and headed out to Paris on Saturday morning. This is where I met the lovely Natalie from The Nutrionista and Lucy from Fashion Fitness Food who were coming along to do their first 10km! We checked in to our beautiful hotel and got ready for our 5km shakeout run from the Nike store in St Michel. There were rumors that we would have someone amazing paying us a visit but no one would give up the info! We headed to the top of the store and waited patiently.
Hello Mr Carl Lewis... That is, THE Carl Lewis who has won 10 Olympic medals and 10 world championships medals. I struggled to get a picture of him through the crowds of phones and cameras but Rach's long arms just about managed.
We headed out on our shake out run and got to run part of the city centre, we even ran past the Louvre which was pretty epic. We filled the roads while music pumped out of the Nike Pacer back packs- vibes on vibes! We were getting hyped for the race.
After the run we headed back to our hotel to get changed and ready for the night's event. I found a lil surprise in my room. I got a present from Nike along with Laduree macarons- so perfect!
Again there were rumors that someone would be playing but no one would tell us who. We began to brainstorm ideas- it's an evening event so it must be a performer, it must be a FIT performer, it must be a fit performer who loves running!
You guessed it, the one and only talented ELLIE GOULDING came out on stage. We loved this fit chick already but seeing her live had us all in absolute awe. She got on stage in her high waisted trousers and Nike sports bra (Sports Luxe- we love it!) and belted out a few of her best hits, all while jumping up and down on stage! She seriously has a mad amount of energy, I just can't comprehend! I mean look at my shocked face in the picture below (lolz)!
What is a visit to Paris without visiting our ultimate fave food spot. With the limited time we had we quickly headed to Pho 14 in china town after Ellie Goulding's set to get our #weruntoeat carb up of Vietnamese food. Our ultimate best dishes: Pho, Banh Cuon and Bun Thit Nuong all washed down with our staple Vietnamese drink Cafe Sua Da. We got there JUST before it closed, the owners were militant and rushed us to put our order in and eat as fast as possible! We finished our starters and mains all within 20 minutes haha.
OK so cafe sua da is basically a Vietnamese coffee with condensed milk. Coffee at 11pm at night is probably a bad idea when we have a 10km race to do the next day, but hey we're in Paris, we can't not make the most of it. So obviously after our meal we headed out to Wanderlust Paris where our friend Clems was DJing all night. The caffeine from our drinks earlier might have given us a bit too much energy!
That night happened to be Nuit Blanche (White Night) in Paris where you enjoy street art and exhibitions from 12am till 6am, or if you're like us you just party. We partied until we had to agree a curfew of 4am between us. We got back to the hotel and we took a picture of our race day lay down. Yep, that's right, we still had the energy to take pictures for Instagram at 4:30am- if that's not dedication to our Instagram followers I don't know what is!
Waking up the next day was one hell of a struggle. My alarm went off and I snoozed for about an hour until I forced my head off of the extra amazing pillows my hotel had. My eyes could seriously not get any smaller! I quickly popped my race kit on and headed down to meet the girls for breakfast- which consisted of a lot of coffee and a couple laughs (at me) from the rest of the girls!
We got to the race start- bag drop was swift and easy. There was a great photo booth section which obviously meant that we had to queue up to get some pictures done and in standard Food & Lycra style get to the race start late. Not that it was a problem- the aim of the race was to have fun and stick with Laura's mum who had joined us.
The route was beautiful and relatively flat. We ran down beautiful Parisian roads with 10,000 runners. It was so epic and probably one of the most enjoyable 10kms I have done so far, this is probably because of a variety of reasons: We wasn't gunning for it, we were supporting Laura's mum, we got to really appreciate the sights and take it all in and the fact there was cake at the 5km mark!
Finishing was an emotional one, Laura's mum is too cute and she is 68 FYI! What an inspiration. We were all super proud to be running with her- especially Laura.
We wore our beautifully shiny medals with pride and finished our visit to Paris with Steak and Chips... Obvs!
Thank you so much Nike UK for an epic weekend!