The Cruelty of Expectations

Covering the financial industry as a journalist taught me how expectations can change a story. Company A says profit doubled: that's good news by itself but the forecast was for a fivefold gain, so the results are disappointing. Company B says sales fell 20 percent, signaling problems. Because revenue was predicted to drop 59 percent, its investors might still be pleased. The same goes in sports, and last week at the Tour de France, French cyclist Thomas Voeckler fell victim to rollercoaster expectations: his own and those of an entire nation.

Voeckler unexpectedly took the lead of the Tour on July 10, with 12 stages remaining. The 32-year-old rider, who finished 76 out of 170 in 2010, wasn't among the favorites: a French TV commentator described him as ``not the most talented rider of the peloton, but a fighter who never gives up.'' The French public, starved of victory since Bernard Hinault won the Tour in 1985, embraced Voeckler as a national hero.
The race leader's yellow jersey, or ``maillot jaune,'' for Voeckler wasn't a total surprise for those who follow the Tour -- which is about all French older than one year. The hard-working rider became the public's darling in 2004 by staying 10 days in yellow, before Lance Armstrong crushed a nation's dream and won his first of seven Tours.
Meanwhile France was still waiting for its next Bernard Hinault, a fixture of the Tour who gives away the winning jerseys at the end of every stage during the podium ceremony: yellow for the overall leader, green for the best sprinter, white for the best rider under 25 years old and, my favorite, polka-dot for the ``king of the mountain.'' Once in a while a young rider is heralded as the new Hinault and his career is promptly torpedoed, crushed by pressure and unrealistic expectations. (The same goes in tennis: the last French winner of Roland Garros, the French Open, was Yannick Noah in 1985.)

 (Voecler in yellow surrounded by his team mates in the Pyrenées. Photo by Mathias-S.)

Voeckler was realistic about his chances to stay in yellow on July 10, candidly setting the expectations low. He said in interviews after the stage that he would fight as hard as he could to keep the lead but didn't expect to survive the Pyrenées mountains.

Voeckler is a ``puncher-barouder,'' the type of riders who break away abruptly from the peloton and ride alone or in small groups for hours to try to win a stage. They fight against a peloton of about 180 riders organized in teams who take turns drafting each other to catch up. But to win the 3,430-kilometer (2,130 miles), three-week Tour across France, you need more than kamikaze breakaways: you need to be good at climbing mountains and at time trials too -- not Voeckler's forte. You also need strong teammates who can protect you, bring you bottles of water and help you up the climbs; Voeckler's team was considered weak.

Everyday Voeckler stayed in yellow that week was as sweet as it was unforeseeable. In France, we say that the ``maillot jaune'' can give you wings, and that's what happened to Voeckler in the Pyrenées. There he was, ``our'' Voeckler, keeping up with the leaders in the mountains with panache. In his characteristic style, bouncing around out of the saddle, he looked comfortable amid Andy Schleck, Cadel Evans and Alberto Contador, the three Tour favorites. He fought like a lion and couldn't believe he was able to follow the ``cadors.'' French commentators started saying that Voeckler may have underestimated himself and should revise up his ambitions. After the Pyrenées, France started to dream in yellow: can Voeckler win the Tour?

``Everybody's talking about it,'' Voeckler said in an interview with a French newspaper on July 19, the day before the two most difficult stages in the Alps. ``It's premature. But I start wondering whether I'm right to give myself zero chance to win, or whether you do well to think I may win. Since my last yellow jersey in 2004, I know how it works and I know the French like to think that a French can win."
The seeds of high expectation were planted, even though Voeckler, in the same interview, repeated that he wasn't going to win.

(See video of Voeckler keeping up with the cadors in the Pyrenées here.)

Like a French movie, the story doesn't end well. In the first Alpine stage, Voeckler took risks on a descent and veered off onto the concrete courtyard of a house, losing time. Two days later, after starting the stage with a lead of 15 seconds, Voeckler made what a teammate called a ``small error'' by trying to follow two favorites in the lower portion of the Galibier pass. He should have waited for the third one, Cadel Evans -- the eventual Tour winner. It's the kind of mistake Voeckler wouldn't have made without the yellow jersey on his shoulders.
``We knew Thomas had very little chance to win. He lost more time than we had estimated,'' because of the tactical error, Anthony Charteau, the teammate, wrote in Le Figaro. ``There was so much pressure on him.''
Voeckler lost the lead later that day at the Alpe d'Huez, a legendary climb on the Tour. He was fuming when he crossed the finish, accusing a TV motorcycle of staying too close in front of Contador and allowing him to draft during the ascent of the Galibier. Voeckler's anger was a sign he had begun to believe he could win, in spite of himself. We made him believe it, and now he was crushed. After the following day's stage, the man who was France's hero for 10 days was seen riding his bike alone to his team's hotel. He finished fourth overall.

(View from the Col du Galibier.)

France has already turned its sights to its next big hope: Pierre Rolland, a 24-year-old team mate of Voeckler. Rolland helped his team leader for 10 days, then won the Alpe d'Huez stage after receiving Voeckler's permission to leave his side. He was the first French winner of the coveted stage since...Bernard Hinault. Can Rolland, who won the white jersey for the best young rider this year, be a future Tour winner? That will be France's question, and the cycle of hope -- and the hope of its cycling -- will continue.

La Madeleine: my Tour de Proust

A ``madeleine'' is a little, spongy French cake shaped like the shell of a scallop. The cake was immortalized by Marcel Proust, in ``Du Côté de Chez Swann,'' when the delicious taste of a madeleine soaked in tea revives the narrator's senses and brings back a childhood memory. As I was cycling up the high-mountain pass col de la Madeleine in my native French Alps last month, I had a Proustian reminiscence: the taste of the lemon-flavored madeleines I used to eat as a child.

(Scallop-shell shaped madeleines de Commercy. February 2007. Source: Bernard Leprêtre.)

I've made it a tradition while vacationing in my parents' home in the Alps to climb at least one of the passes classified as ``hors catégorie,'' or beyond classification, that were included in that year's Tour de France. These are the most difficult climbs in the world's most difficult bike race. I rode Alpe d'Huez, probably the most famous climb in the U.S., last year, and col du Galibier, one of my favorites, in 2006 and 2007.

I had no choice this year because the Alps were short-changed in the Tour de France: three stages, out of 20, and only one hors catégorie pass: col de la Madeleine -- which wasn't named after the cake. None of the mythical Alpine passes was included in the 2010 edition: no Alpe d'Huez, no Galibier, no Iseran and no Mont Ventoux. Meanwhile, the Pyrénées mountains in the southwest of France got five stages and five hors catégorie climbs.

The Tour's riders climbed the col de la Madeleine on July 13, the fifth and final pass in the 204.5 kilmeter (127 mile) ninth stage between Morzine-Avoriaz and Saint-Jean-de-Maurienne.

A few days later, my parents, my husband and I drove to the bottom of the col for our own, more modest, ride. Ahead of us was a climb of 26 km, with an average gradient of about 6.4 percent and peaks at more than 10 percent: for every 100 meters you ride, you gain 10 meters in elevation. Overall, we were about to gain almost 1,600 meters in altitude. My husband would reprise his precious role as ``voiture balai,'' which can be translated as ``sweeping broom car.'' It's French cycling jargon for the mini-bus that follows the last riders in the Tour and picks up those who drop out the race. Except my husband drove ahead of us and waited at the top: there was no dropping out possible.

(The road to col de la Madeleine, with view of Mont Blanc in the background.)

My parents, age 62 and 63, had come back the day before at 5 a.m. from a weeklong cycling trip in Corsica. They averaged 100 km a day under temperatures that topped 30 degrees Celsius (86 degrees Fahenheit). A week before leaving for Corsica, they'd come back from their annual cycling ride from their home in the Alps to their apartment in Nice, climbing hors catégorie passes such as Mont Ventoux and carrying their own bags.

Since the start of the cycling season, my parents estimated they'd cycled about 3,000 km. I had mainly trained on a stationary bike, with the exception of a hilly 30 miler around our Pennsylvania home and a few climbs up my favorite local mountain in the Alps, col du Granier. Training on the stationary bike had worked to prepare for the Galibier, so I figured it would work for la Madeleine, which is shorter and easier.

The climb started off with 3 km of steady slope averaging 8 percent to 9 percent: there was no time to warm up. I discovered a novelty in my mountains: an increasing number of roads -- especially those leading to famous Tour de France passes -- have signs every kilometer announcing the average gradient of the following kilometer. It can be both a blessing and a heart-breaker: I was relieved when I saw a 4 percent sign after the steep slopes of the first few kilometers, and crushed in the second half of the climb when encountering several signs for 9 percent or more in a row. There was a downhill section around kilometer 10, and an easy slope at kilometer 19, which allowed my legs to recoup before heading to steeper sections.

(There's no train to col de la Madeleine, but cows get to watch cyclists passing by.)

As I approached kilometer 16, I recalled the TV coverage of the Tour at the same spot a few days earlier: I went up in the saddle, pretending I was one of the riders. I could hear the voice of Laurent Fignon, a former professional cyclist and now a commentator of the Tour on French television. Fignon, who won the race in 1984 and 1985, was diagnosed with intestinal-tract cancer last year. This year, he was still commenting on the Tour live, in a raspy voice altered by a tumor affecting his vocal folds.
Andy Schleck, the young rider from Luxemburg, should attack if he wants to leave behind Alberto Contador, the 2009 race winner, I remembered Fignon saying. That's what Schleck did a few moments later, but Contador went up in the saddle and stayed in his wheel. Schleck took the lead of the race and the yellow jersey at the end of that stage, but he lost the overall race to Contador 1 1/2 week later by 8 seconds.

I didn't attack anyone. In the final kilometers, a cyclist in his 40s or 50s, passed me. I expected him to go faster, but he slowed down, so I went up in the saddle and passed him back. At the top, I was greeted by the clinging bells of a herd of cows after a two-hour ride. My father followed about 20 minutes later and my mother about 10 minutes after that. After taking pictures, I decided to add a solo ride down the other side of the mountain, adding about 10 kilometers and visiting another place of my childhood: Saint Francois Longchamps, a winter resort where I used to ski.

(The cycling family reunited at col de la Madeleine.)

Lance in My Hometown (For Five Seconds)

The Tour de France started its last Alpine stage in my hometown, Chambéry, on July 14, the National day Americans call ``Bastille Day'' (The French say ``le 14 juillet.''). About 10 minutes after the start, the riders passed through my village, Les Marches, on a road that's about 1.5 km (1 mile) away from the house where I grew up.

The temperature was very hot, in the 90s, and people kept cool in the shade while waiting for the riders.

The kids got excited when they spotted the television helicopter, the surest sign that the peloton was getting closer.

 Here they come, very fast: probably at 55 km/h (35 miles/hour) on that road. Video courtesy of P.W.

And here he is: Lance Armstrong, passing through my village in a blur.

L'Alpe d'Huez Moulinette

L'Alpe d'Huez wasn't number one on the list of Tour de France mountains I wanted to climb. Although probably the most famous pass to U.S. cyclists, l'Alpe (14 km, 8.7 miles) is neither the hardest nor the longest climb of the Tour. It’s not even a pass: it's a ski resort. As a native of the Alps, I dream of such mythical mountains as Col de l'Iseran, le Col de la Croix de Fer and le Mont Ventoux. Those names are linked in my memory with black and white film of champions of yesteryear wearing spare air tubes wrapped around their chest.
No climb was on the cards for me in 2009 anyway.

(A view from Le Bourg-d'Oisans: at the bottom of L'Alpe d'Huez.)

Yet a few weeks after June 5, when I landed in hospital for a severe colon infection caused by a bacteria, I set my mind on l'Alpe. Like a lovelorn adolescent, I obsessed over it without telling anyone.

There were many reasons why I wouldn't be able to climb l'Alpe this year: among them, my illness, my training, and the lack of time while home in the Alps to prepare my legs with a few easier passes. I chose to focus on the reasons why, if I had a shot at any mountain, it would be l'Alpe. My parents, who start riding passes as soon as the snow melts in spring, told me last year that the Alpe d'Huez ride is easier than le Granier, a local pass I have ridden more than a dozen times over the years. (See previous entry). That comment planted a seed in my mind that a year later grew into a big plant of a plan. If I could get strong enough to ride my familiar Granier this year, then I could ride l'Alpe; it was a simple, elegant proposition.

(The Alpine cyclists legs: thousands of kilometers in them.)

When a rider meets another rider on Alpine roads, they ask each other (in a literal translation): ``How many kilometers do you have in the legs?'' By early September, the answer of veteran cyclists such as my parents is in the thousands, with very few on flat roads. Mine was: ``Zero on the road.'' According to my training log, I spent more than 34 hours on the stationary bike back home in the U.S., from the beginning of July and early September. It looks a lot less impressive when you put it this way: it's an average of half an hour a day.

I made it up le Col du Granier on Sept. 6, to my great joy. As soon as we were back to my parents' home, I dropped my little bomb: ``I want to do l'Alpe d'Huez,'' I told my bemused husband and parents. ``I've been thinking about this for a long time.''

(Le Bourg-d'Oisans: getting ready for the climb.)

Two days later, we were on a parking lot near Le Bourg- d'Oisans at the bottom of the road to l'Alpe, getting ready for the climb, when my father dropped a little bomb of his own. He'd checked an information panel about the climb and it turned out that l'Alpe is longer and steeper than le Granier. My parents chose that moment to admit they hadn't climbed l'Alpe in many years and didn't remember clearly how hard it was. Now I was worried again. My plan of testing my strength and physical condition on le Granier looked flawed, at best.

(The stats of the start.)

L'Alpe d'Huez, starting at an altitude of 720 meters and finishing at 1,810 meters, has 21 hairpin turns (``virages'' in French) named after the winners of the Tour stage. The record is subject to debate, so let's just say that the fastest riders were Marco Pantani, with 37 minutes 35 seconds in a 1994 stage, and Lance Armstrong, with 37 minutes 36 seconds in a 2004 time trial.

Seconds mattered to them, but not to me. I decided to stay behind my father and play it safe. The slope gets steep right from the start and I dropped to a very low gear ratio to avoid killing my ill-prepared thighs. After a couple of virages, I started to warm up and feel better. Every virage provided me with a goal, an opportunity to sip some water and enough time to recuperate for few seconds before the slope got steep again. I decided to focus on the first half and reassess my fitness after 10 hairspins. During that half, I thought of the excruciating stomach pain from which I suffered in the emergency room on June 5: any muscle pain on the way up l'Alpe would pale in comparison. That made me smile to myself.

After virage 11 or 12, I knew I could finish so I passed my father and went on at my own pace. The weather was ideal: sunny and not too hot. The view was breathtaking. I kept smiling to myself.

My cycling style had always been to go up the saddle (``en danseuse'' in French) during climbs. ``En danseuse'' is the style of climbing specialists and I had made it my signature. That involves using on a higher gear ratio, which moves your bike forward a longer length with each pedal stroke but also forces you to go up the saddle regularly to get more power.

This year, with the lack of training, I adopted Lance Amstrong's style on some of his big mountain wins: ``la moulinette.'' He used a smaller gear ratio than other riders. He would cover a small distance at each stroke and would need to pedal faster. But he had enough oxygen in the tank to pass his rivals, who were stuck in high gears and forced to make a bigger effort at each stroke.

It worked for me too. I finished in 1 hour 9 minutes, followed by my father three minutes later and my mother nine minutes later. I was 32 minutes behind the record, give or take the seconds.

(The suntan test: guess who spent time outdoors and who didn't.)

Favorite bike ride: Col du Granier

Like a sailor, I have a bike in every port.
Neither of them has been treated the way they deserve in the past year. The home bike, a purple Specialized Dolce bought in New York in 2005, is stuck on a stationary machine, amputated of its front wheel. I use it several times a week, but it last rode on a road in summer 2008. The bike I keep at my parents' home in the French Alps -- a 2006 navy blue Specialized Ruby, the better of the two -- was left hanging on the garage's rack for two years until the beginning of September, when I finally got the chance to take it to climb mountains.

(Leaving home to climb the Col du Granier, its summit in the clouds.)

One of them is Mont Granier. Every day from the age of 3 to 17, I woke up to the sight of the Granier's 800-meter (2,625-feet) cliff. Every summer, my family would kick-start the hiking season by climbing up its 1,933-meter summit. Its pass, the ``col du Granier,'' sits underneath the cliff at an altitude of 1,134 meters. According to its Wikipedia entry, the col du Granier featured in 16 Tours de France from 1947 to 1998. From the house, it's a 13-km (8.1-mile) ride, including a 10-km climb. The road has a slope of 18% at its steepest: for every 100 meters you ride, you gain 18 meters in elevation.
I was about 17 or 18 the first time I tried to bike up the col du Granier, without any preparation. I had to get off my bike and walk in the steepest portions. I turned around before reaching the top. The second time, I went all the way to the col, but I still walked in the hardest parts. By the third or fourth time, I finished without getting off the bike.

(Training hard for the Granier on the purple bike.)

Le Granier is my favorite bike ride. It's grueling and the view is rewarding, just the way I like. Since I left home years ago, riding and/or hiking it is a tradition when I come back on vacation.
This year, I didn't know whether I could reach the top. My only training was on the stationary bike. I had no kilometers in the legs, as a French cycling expression goes. My parents, with thousands of kilometers in their legs, accompanied me. My mother estimated she'd been up le col du Granier about 20 times this season.

(The family is ready to take on the Col du Granier, once again.)

The steepest portion is at the beginning, as if to discourage the faint-hearted. It lasts a few kilometers with no opportunity to take a breath or relax the muscles. Then comes the first of two easier parts, before the slope gets steep again for another few kilometers. Near the top, it gets hard again.
I made up for the two years of confinement by taking my beloved blue bike four times to the Granier in a week.
I had been thinking about that ride for months, especially after getting sick in June. While exercising on the purple bike at home, I would try to recall the road's turns and twists, and imagine I was riding there. On my first ride, I got reacquainted with my old friend -- memories of hardship, of feeling strong, of heat or cold weather, and music I was listening to on my iPod during past rides. I stayed in my father's wheel and I was just happy to make it to the top -- in 1 hour and 6 minutes.

(Mother and Daughter conquered the col du Granier.)

The second time was mine. Reassured by the first ride, I felt like flying and passed my father, who was having a down day.
On the third ride, I made the mistake of starting with the wrong gear. By the time I realized it, after the steepest portion, I had already spent more energy than I intended. Near the top, I let my father go; he was feeling strong, I could tell, and I didn't want to exhaust myself trying to stay in his wheel. It was so hard that I thought I had a flat (I didn't but my legs were fried: I suspect I paid for the wine I had drunk at lunch few hours earlier).

(Papa et moi. At the top of our game.)

The final ride was a solo: my goodbye to the Granier circa 2009. It was the easiest of all.
Now the blue bike is back in the garage. Until next year and next Granier.

The Partner

Fly fishing and long-distance road biking have this in common: they're individual sports that are best enjoyable with partners. During those long hours on the water or the bike, no one will cast the line or push on the pedals for you. It's a solitary effort. Yet it's better to share the experience with a partner who, besides keeping you company, can back you up when the tide rises or when you have a flat or a fall. The fear of a flat is especially acute among female cyclists.

On Oct. 7, after few days of a bad cold and few days of bad weather, I finally embarked on my first bike ride of the year on Cape Cod. My goal was to make my way to the beach where my husband -- without a partner that week -- planned to go fly fishing and meet him there. The temperature was in the low-50s (11 degrees Celsius), with strong northwest winds. I had forgotten my rain jacket at home so I bundled up with three layers of shirts. Most of the first 12 miles (20 km) were in the shade, on a straight and fairly flat bike trail going north -- an otherwise pleasant route when you're not fighting the cold, headwinds and a runny nose.

There were very few other riders to venture out that day. It was a fight between me and the machine: I tried to push myself as hard as I could. My main enemy, that day and in my subsequent rides on the bike trail: squirrels. When I first visited New York in 1990, I remember taking many pictures of those little creatures in Central Park. We don't have them in France and I didn't know, back then, how lucky we are. The squirrels typically waited the last minute to jump away from my wheels or, in several instances, into my wheels. They're very fast, very nervous and prone to make very wrong decisions. I had two near-misses in three rides.
At the end of the trail, I took a bike route, shared with cars, that took me along the beaches in east Wellfleet. The sun warmed my back. My muscles slowly warmed up too.

About 23 miles (37 km) later, I found our car on a parking lot near Pamet Harbor, changed shoes, wrapped myself into a warm jacket and started the long walk on the beach to seek my life's partner.

On Oct. 8, I met my husband, fishing south of Chatham. The weather conditions were better than the previous day, with temperatures in the mid 60s (18 degrees Celsius) and no wind. I took the bike trail south, down to Harwich, and came across a cranberry field.

My final honeymoon bike ride, on Oct. 10, was a five-hour, 70-mile (112 km), solitary exercise that took me close to Provincetown, at the northern tip of the cape, and back. The weather was ideal, with temperatures in the low 70s (over 20 degrees Celsius). I took the road, which has more hills and fewer suicidal squirrels than the bike trail, so I could push the bike a little harder. I'm used to cycling in the French Alps, where a ride consists in climbing up a pass, and then coming down. Here I had to pace myself to last the distance and to avoid leg fatigue from constantly going and down. There was no fishing for my husband that day, so I was truly without a partner. I encountered ghosts, cadavers and gory creatures on Route 6 -- the Halloween decoration of a garden. But I didn't have a flat, so it's a happy ending.

A Day for Books and Socks

I'm reading ``What I Talk About When I talk About Running,'' by the novelist Haruki Murakami, a gift from D., my friend and running partner in New York City, and from J., my friend and former boss. Even though Murakami and I are of different age, sex and country, and even though we came to running for different reasons, I find myself nodding every other page at a statement or an anecdote, thinking: ``Yes! Me too!'' There is a common ground to runners that I haven't found in other parts of life. My love for cycling is as great as my love for running, but when I talk with fellow cyclists, it's usually about how a ride went or what the next ride will be like. It's stories about having a flat, changing gears or falling. It's about hills and slope percentages (``I did a 12 percent. It was tough.'') Runners' conversations, in my experience, are more visceral, especially as far as long-distance runners are concerned. Our body is the machine, so it's about muscle, bones, sweat, blood, blisters and bladders. We share a visceral common ground.

Today is a beautiful day on Cape Cod, sunny and about 63 degrees Fahrenheit (17 degrees Celsius), and I'm inside, reading, wearing warm socks.

I'm not outside because I did something I think most runners will understand, because they've done it too. I ignored the signals and thought I could get away with a sore throat. As a runner, I'm trained to push my body to its limits even if it tells me it's in pain. That mental discipline is the only way to finish a race or a run. Yesterday, when I woke up with a throat on fire (due to my running in the rain two days earlier), I decided to have a ``make or break'' run. I believe, or perhaps make myself believe, that sometimes a good sweat is the best cure to the beginning of an illness. It has worked for me in the past. Not yesterday. I took my camera and went to the Priscilla Lane town landing, on the other side Nauset Harbor's Mill Pond, which I visited earlier this week. I was glad I did because it was beautiful. I felt a bit cold at the beginning of the run, but the sun broke through from time to time to warm me, and even though my throat felt dry and painful, the rest of my body enjoyed the run. I ran 10.3 miles (16.6 km) and I felt like I could have continued for much longer if my throat hadn't been so painful.

This morning, I woke up with a full-blown cold. Ignoring a sore throat isn't too dangerous. I'm staying home today, reading about running and hoping to be back in shape tomorrow for a bike ride. Sometimes, runners ignore much larger problems and avoid consulting until the pain is unbearable, because there's nothing worse than hearing from a doctor: ``You have to stop running immediately.'' During a marathon, I need to force myself through pain and discouragement: giving up isn't an option. To finish a marathon, a runner must ignore her body when it says, ``You have to stop running immediately.'' After training my brain not to give up, I have a hard time being reasonable and stopping before it's too late. It seems it's an inherent part of me, as a runner.

Ode to my running mother

My mother, who lives in the French Alps, is a runner. She is 61.

She grew up in small towns, including La Grave, a village above Grenoble that would get cut off from the rest of the world for days during snowstorms in the 1950s.
She didn't do any sport until the summer of 1978, when my parents rented a chalet in the mountains with another couple.
She followed her friends, both athletes, for rides up the hills on an old bike they'd loaned her. ``It was hell,'' she said. ``It didn't deter me.''

She was 31, the mother of two young daughters.
She returned home, down in the valley, and began running, on her own. She ran few hundred yards the first time and then alternated between walking and jogging.
She walked less the second time. She ran the full 5k loop the third time.

She was the only runner of the area at the end of the 1970s. ``People looked at me like I was a `bête curieuse,'' a strange animal, she said. ``They thought I was a lunatic. A woman who runs!'' She almost feared for her safety.
She gave the running ``virus'' to my father and our family doctor, a close friend. My parents left the house every Saturday and Sunday mornings for runs of 9 km, 12 km, 15 km or 20 km (12 miles), depending on how much time they had. ``What are you running after?'' I once asked them.

My mother is a modest runner.

She doesn't brag about her times, even though she could. In her life, exercising is normal, like breathing. When she talks about running, it's usually because she couldn't run and she's frustrated.
She ran her first marathon in 1995 in Paris in 4h04, at 48.
She ran her best marathon in 1999 in Paris in 3h36, at 52.
She ran SaintéLyon, a 69km (43 miles) night race, twice. The November event starts at midnight. Participants, wearing head lamps, run and walk on muddy, hilly dirt roads in the woods and arrive 9 hours later, just in time for breakfast.

She's run several marathons in just over 4 hours in the past two years. ``I'm getting old,'' she said. ``I'd better get used to it.'' She doesn't seem to be aware many young men and women are only dreaming of completing a marathon in 4 hours and many more fail to finish the race.
She was first of her age category in the Turin marathon in March 2007, finishing in 4h05. It wasn't impressive, she said, because there were ``only'' seven women over 60.
She ran the NYC Marathon in 3h58 in November 2007, finishing 10th among women 60 to 64. She was happy about her time, but not impressed by her ranking. ``There aren't that many women in that category,'' she said. There were 231.
She was first of her category in a 10k race of Monaco in March, completing the hilly course in 49 minutes, at a pace of 7:53 per mile, or 12.2 km/h.
She plans to run her 15th marathon in New York in November. Every year, she says it may be her last.
She's just happy to be able to run. ``When I started, I would never have imagined I would still be running at 60,'' she said.

My mother is an inspiring runner.