Last year in Spain I got injured, tearing a muscle in a paragliding incident. It’s taken me the better part of half a year – from hobbling along on my first pathetic jog after the accident, to getting pummeled, needled, and electrocuted by multiple physiotherapists, to discovering the concept of runstreaking – to get back into something resembling the shape I was in before.

The Paris marathon shone like a beacon for me this whole time. I signed up to it after Amsterdam, and it became a symbol for me: if I could make it through that I would take it as a recipe that I was good as new again.

It wasn’t easy, it wasn’t fun, but I knew the long road would lead me back to where I want to be – fit and active. Small, incremental steps would do the trick.

In February I decided to up the ante in my training regime, adding an iron streak (lifting weights every day) to the run ditto, but half a month into that I injured the deltoid muscle in my shoulder, thus adding to the burden instead of alleviating it. Cue more pummeling, massage, and limited mobility for weeks – not an ideal way of preparing for a marathon.

But at least I kept up the running; I ran for over 100 consecutive days (earning myself a Forrest Gump diploma in the process), only ending my streak the day before yesterday, so as to give my body a little break before yesterday’s event. Because yesterday was the big day: the Paris marathon.

Did I make it?

The training I had done wasn’t really enough to run the whole thing anything near as fast as my PB. The smart thing to do then would have been to keep a steady slow pace throughout, but instead I made the stupid mistake of trying to tag along with someone out to set a personal best significantly faster than my own. Clever? No. But you never know – maybe I would surprise myself?

It couldn’t last. I kept up with him for 10k or so, and ran a decent half marathon, but that’s all I had in me. So when my body started telling me that enough was enough I decided to listen and slowed down to a speed that I knew would allow me to finish the whole thing without breaking down in the process. I could have pushed myself and suffered through the second half and done a slightly better time, I suppose, but that wasn’t the point.

Besides, people were dropping like flies in the unexpected heat (up to 26 degrees centigrade in the shade, and very little shade), with runners falling by the wayside with cramps or worse. I must have seen at least half a dozen ambulances carting victims of heat stroke off, and I personally helped as many cramped-up runners by giving them salt from my little baggie. Compared to them I finished strong, in spite of (or thanks to) having walked long stretches. And I enjoyed it. The crowds were great, a lot better than I would have thought in Paris, and the city itself is of course gorgeous, so I was happy, even though my finish time was the third slowest I’ve ever done. I can live with that.

Would I like to come back and do better one day? Sure, but for now I know that I am back, and that is more important.