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At Sunday’s 2023 Paris Marathon, a recognizable determine within the ultra-trail working neighborhood took his shot over 42.2 kilometres. Again-to-back Extremely-Path Du Mont-Blanc (UTMB) podium finisher and Franco-Canadian Mathieu Blanchard ran a 10-minute private finest of two:22:36 on the streets of Paris.
Blanchard completed thirty sixth general (and thirty sixth male), beating his earlier marathon time of two:32:34 from the 2017 Chicago Marathon (his debut). He opened the race in 1:12:04 and ran a large destructive break up of 1:10:32 within the latter half of a difficult Paris course, right into a reported headwind and almost 200m of elevation acquire.
Earlier than the race, he acknowledged the huge variations between street and path racing, however mentioned he actually didn’t count on this nice outcome. “I used to be aiming for two:25, so averaging a velocity of 18 km/h appears mind-blowing to me,” mentioned Blanchard on Instagram.
In a post-race interview with the French information station Stadion, Blanchard mentioned he nonetheless felt he had one thing left on the finish and would like to chase the two:20 mark in his subsequent street marathon.
Blanchard, 35, was born and raised in France however at the moment lives and trains in Montreal. He’s coached by former Quebec marathoner Dorys Langlois. In 2022, he turned solely the second runner to interrupt the 20-hour barrier at UTMB, ending second to his idol, Kilian Jornet. This yr, Blanchard intends on returning to Chamonix in late August for one more shot on the UTMB podium.
Within the weeks main as much as the Paris Marathon, the two-time UTMB podium finisher spent a number of weeks coaching at altitude in Kenya, growing his velocity on the roads and studying the variations between street and path working.
Blanchard will now head to Morocco to race the historic 234-kilometre multi-stage desert extremely, Marathon Des Sables (MDS), starting on April 21. He completed fifth on the MDS in 2021.
Blanchard has certified for and plans to run each The Western States 100 and UTMB this summer time, a feat his good friend and fellow Canadian Marianne Hogan pulled off in 2022 (reaching the rostrum at each). The 2 100-mile races are inside two months of one another, which makes for an intimidating double. Most ultra-trail athletes will deal with working nicely at one reasonably than attempting to race each.
It will likely be Blanchard’s first time racing Western States.
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