June 5–12, 1997

ultimate summer fun

France On 26.2 Miles A Day

The Paris Marathon is a great way to see the city, if you watch out for les droppings du dog.

By Vance Lehmkuhl

Illustration by Vance Lehmkuhl.

Like many '90s-style tourists, I saw Paris on foot. From L'Arc de Triomphe to the Louvre, from the Bastille to the eastern woodlands, down the Seine and back again, from the Eiffel Tower to the western edge of the city... all on foot.

Unlike most tourists, though, I did it in less than six hours. Not that I'm bragging — most of the people with me did it in less than five, and the pros took just over two. It was the Paris Marathon, that whirlwind tour of the city of lights — with complimentary food and drink — on nothing a day.

It wasn't my idea. It was Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center's, as part of a fundraising effort which did sound like a good deal: as long as you agreed to run the marathon — and raise $3,000 in pledges — you could go to Paris and stay in a swanky hotel for free (paid for by Compaq computers).

So last Thanksgiving I started training, at first running a couple miles every other day, working up to daily 4- or 5-mile runs with long weekend runs of 10, 12, 15 miles, and so on. An instant benefit of this is that in preparing to see Paris I really got to see Philadelphia — at least the northwestern portion. Doing on foot the same routes I already knew by car gave me a firmer, more detailed sense of the way Roxborough, Germantown and Mount Airy fit together around the Wissahickon. I also learned exactly where the land goes uphill and where it goes down.

Boy, did I learn. As I trained, my endurance increased, running became easier, I lost weight, my constitution became hale and hearty — until a week before the race, when I came down with a cold.

This made the plane trip over somewhat less than enjoyable. The landing process in particular was excruciatingly painful, and by the time I got to sleep in my hotel bed I had been awake for 35 hours — but, as the saying goes, the show must go on. I had signed up to run the marathon, and run I would, even if my head was toppling over with snot.

Weakened as I was, I didn't get to run much in the two days before the race. Instead, I did a lot of walking around the area of the hotel (i.e. La Place de l'Etoile), with one side trip to Montmartre to see the only vegetarian restaurant that I knew of in the whole city. As I was walking around these historic, crazy-angled streets, one of the things that made an impression on me was the dog shit. Not only did I see plenty of it, I watched plenty of people walk their dogs, let them shit wherever, and happily walk off.

Yes, I know the United States was the same way 15 years ago. Still I couldn't stop myself from thinking: Savages. After all, there were plenty of piles with telltale shoeprints in them, indicating that the culture hadn't simply evolved beyond stepping in the stuff. But it did seem they hadn't yet made the connection between the convenience of freely "walking" the dog and the inconvenience of having dog shit on your shoes.

The day of the Marathon dawned cloudy and cool. There was a threat of rain shortly before the start, and many runners had donned large white garbage-bag ponchos in which to run. As soon as our section (toward the back of the crowd) started moving, and it became evident that it wasn't going to rain anytime soon, these ersatz ponchos went flying into the air, runners cheerfully doffing them into the crowd behind them with a "who cares" (or, as they say, "va te faire foutre") attitude.

Once these big flimsy bags reached the pavement of the Champs-Elysees, they became serious traffic hazards. I actually saw some people (probably the real runners who were concentrating/chanting for maximum performance) get bags caught around their ankles and stumble, just centimeters from an injury which would take them out of the race, ruin everything. But maybe they figured it's all in good fun, not even expecting the poncho-doffers to go so far as the curb to dispose of their plastic layers.

And speaking of curbing, we reached a parkside section probably one out of every two men jumped out of the crowd to run over to a tree and take a quick piss. Yeah, I'd heard the Zappa song "France" and everything, so I shouldn't have been surprised — but I guess it was the visual tableau of 10 or 15 French guys lined up in a row, one to each perfectly spaced tree, that made it so ludicrous. In this case, though, I didn't think "savages." What I thought was "dogs."

The other visual tableaux were at least as interesting as the tree-pissers. We went through La Place de la Concorde, a mind-boggling expanse of cobblestone and expansive buildings with nothing organic visible, then after a few miles along the Seine we were in a park with thick foliage everywhere and no hint whatsoever of modern civilization. We passed the Eiffel Tower twice, from different angles.

These idyllic sights were slightly undercut by the imperative to watch one's step. I had thought that once we'd outrun the plastic bags we'd be home free, but no: There were, every three or four miles, "Revitaillement" stops — gauntlets of wooden tables where scores of volunteers handed out water and other, mostly sugar-based, pick-me-ups. These included bite-size candy bars, orange and lemon wedges, bananas, and of course, pure sugar (in cubes). Runners would rush through, hastily partake of whatever they needed and throw down the half-empty water bottle, the wrapper, the peel, etc. so that by the time I got to each of these stops (News Flash: I was not out in front of the pack) it was a veritable obstacle course — a morass of wet cobblestones covered with slimy paper, citrus peels and — yes! — banana peels. But I began to crave the appearance of these lethal refreshment stops as we kicked into the final few miles, not only because my body was running low on sugar but because it meant I had made it that much farther, closer to the end, closer to the point when I could finally, blessedly stop running, stop walking, stop altogether.

I went into a kind of altered state of consciousness as we trudged through a beautiful urban park for the last two miles: while my eyes were eagerly drinking in the sweet visuals, my body simply could not believe I was punishing it so relentlessly and it kept trying to distract my brain into shutting down all motor functions. Or at least that's how it seemed.

Finally I made it to the finish line, to the applause of the few spectators still hanging around after five hours and 39 minutes. I got a very nice cartoony medal for having made it in under six hours, and I got some more water, and I got to just stop moving. Finally. We were in a lush park-like boulevard about three blocks from my hotel, and I lay down on the grass, legs aching. I felt glued to the ground. My head was swimming with both exhaustion and satisfaction. I had worked for and achieved an extraordinary goal; I had finally beaten that cold; and I had made it through all 26.2 miles without stepping on a single banana peel.

But what's this in the grass...?

Merde.