Oui to French Style Running

Once again, I found myself in the southwest part of France visiting my boyfriend's brother and sister-in-law at their beautiful gite in Segur La Chateau (near Limoges). For the Americans, gites are popular in France. They are similar to a B&B, but it is like your own house to rent for a minimum of a week and is typically on someone's land or farm. I seriously can't get enough of this place and if you ever find yourself in this area, you must stay here. 

 

Their beautiful backyard area off of the porch.

I wasn't about to let my training plan go down the toilet, because I was in France. Oh no. Thankfully, I only had a 3 mile run scheduled. M&M provided me a running route that didn't have many cars and would be a beautiful run. I thought England was bad with the sidewalks, but France is a whole other story. Runners aren't typically seen in this part of the world and for good reason. They would have to take their chances with life at the hands of the cars. But the route he picked out was perfect. I had minimal cars and was able to at least jump on to a path if a car came driving through. I also chose for obvious reasons not to wear headphones, but instead just played my music from the iphone at a low volume. I felt like it would have disturbed the morning if it was any louder. 



My before picture in front of their house.

Looking out to the vast land of farms and green fields. It was so calming.

I was looking forward to a nice easy 3 mile run leading up to my marathon. I was not supposed to work really hard. However, by going this way, I had to go up hills. Lots of little hills. Oh my, was I not expecting this at all. 

This was after my second hill.

I ended up in a little village called St. Eloy Les Tuileries. I have never been through this town and it had the most hustle and bustle during my run. At first I was a little confused, because I tried to remember M&M's directions on where to go when I got to this town. Thankfully for osmosis or whatever, I went the direction I was supposed to go to head back to the gite.



In France, you will get a sign like the one above, which means you are entering the village.



And this means you have left the village. Tuileries NO MORE!



The tiny village called Tuileries.

This beautiful wagon of flowers was placed by a quaint house.

 

Like England, you will find many WWI and WWII memorials placed throughout small villages in France. This was no exception. 

I have the strength of Richard the Lion, oh yes, I do.

And then I came upon a crossroads. I knew where to go obviously, because it was Segur. However, I was not expecting this cow to just stare at me like I interrupted his day. We have cows in Texas and I have ran in the farm areas with cows in the fields, but they barely register that I'm alive. These are French cows though. I was a mysterious person doing this weird thing they call running. I was an anomaly to these parts and it seemed like the cows were annoyed by my presence. As I was about to turn left, the cow just let out this loud screeching moo of how annoyed he was with me. It actually scared me as it echoed across the lands. Then, I got to the next field and the cows literally stalked me until I left the area and they could get back to their regularly scheduled program of eating hay and drinking some wine.



This by far was the craziest thing that happened to me.

 

Well, maybe this was, too.

 

This is video I took of them stalking me and mooing.

And before I knew it, I stumbled upon the gite. I was so thankful to be done with my run. Bonus points, because my wonderful boyfriend was up and ready to serve me some water.



 I made it back to the gite in one piece.

This was my run according to Runtastic Pro.

Although it was a hillier run and more mileage than I expected, it was such a beautiful run right outside M&M's door. I was just so happy to be in that moment and enjoying the morning. And I burned a few calories before my gorge fest of wine and cheese and wine again. Oh how I love France sometimes.

 

This beautiful walk is connected to the gite if you need anymore reasons to visit. And I absolutely love this picture.



This is in the middle of Segur Le Chateau. It is probably the most picturesque, storybook town that I have ever seen before. I wished my running route took me through the village. Oh well, maybe next time.



The flowers were in full bloom with wonderful smells.



We went to this beautiful town called Bergerac, which is often overlooked for the more popular Bordeuaux town an hour away. It is about 2.5 hours from Segur, but well worth the visit. JL finally got a Grand Mornier Crepe.

We stopped at the Chateau de Tiragand winery on the way home...I mean we were in France. The owner just happened to be in the front area when we walked in to wine taste. Even though, they weren't doing any tours that day, he did our wine tasting. He was fabulous and knew a lot of history of the area. Plus, he let us sample wine that basically had just been taken out of the ground. I highly recommend this winery. Oh and the wine was DELICIOUS!

And I think that's the last of my vacation running/biking related posts. I still plan to post about my falconry experience, because that was too damn cool not to share. And I have my after thoughts on the marathon post and my first run back.