The Official Site of The Gone Runners Running Club and Club Italia

So this last weekend, GR Yvonne Dubois ran a marathon as part of her campaign to compete in Comrades again next year, and she chose a place where at least a few people (editor included) would need Lord Wiki to understand where it is. Its not quite the middle of nowhere but you can see it from there, is the conclusion. 

But what a place to run a Marathon!.... and proud to say Yvonne came in third in her category!.... fabulous performance!

Courtesy of the all knowing Wikipedia -- "New Caledonia; French: Nouvelle-Calédonie) is a special collectivity of France, currently governed under the Nouméa Accord, located in the southwest Pacific Ocean, to the south of Vanuatu, about 1,210 km (750 mi) east of Australia and 20,000 km (12,000 mi) from Metropolitan France. The archipelago, part of the Melanesia subregion, includes the main island of Grande Terre, the Loyalty Islands, the Chesterfield Islands, the Belep archipelago, the Isle of Pines, and a few remote islets. The Chesterfield Islands are in the Coral Sea. French people, and especially locals, refer to Grande Terre as Le Caillou ("the pebble").

It has a land area of 18,576 km2 (7,172 sq mi) divided into three provinces. The North and South Provinces are located on the New Caledonian mainland, while the Loyalty Islands Province is a series of islands off the mainland. Its population of 268,767 (August 2014 census) consists of a mix of the original inhabitants, Kanak people, who are the majority in the North Province and the Loyalty Islands Province and people of European descent (Caldoches and Metropolitan French), Polynesian people (mostly Wallisians), and Southeast Asian people, as well as a few people of Pied-Noir and North African descent who are the majority in the South Province. The capital of the territory is Nouméa."

Yvonne's Story - "On August 25, I ran the Noumea Marathon in New Caledonia. This is a very small marathon, with less than 100 participants.  I was there for a funny reason. Comrades qualifying window just opened up. This year, due to schedule mishaps I had to qualify for the race during the final week. I ended up running\qualifying while I was quite sick and running a terrible fever which resulted in a horrible seeding batch. So this year I thought I’d qualify early and work on improving my seeding batch later. So I ran this at a slowish pace, as a fun run. The course was quite flat. Only a  total elevation gain/loss of 179m. But large sections of the course hug the coastline, so the wind was definitely unfavorable at times.  

It is run in conjunction with a half marathon, and 10km which starts 30 minutes later. The weather was slightly overcast, but at times quite windy. The course had several out and back sections, a nice opportunity to see the front runners. Both the men's and women's winners were Japanese. Yuki Kawauchi came in at 2:17:24 and Haruka Yamaguchi came in at 2:36:56. 

Most of the race announcements and instructions were in French or Japanese. There was an award's ceremony in the evening, a nice touch was all participants received a printed photo crossing the finish line. I came in 3rd in my category. This was a small, fun marathon. A not so fun thing was having to submit a medical certificate. Apparently, these are inexpensive and easily obtained In New Caledonia, it was extremely expensive to obtain mine in HK. Next year's race will be held on August 30

I arrived the day before the race, and flew out the day after. New Caledonia is not a cheap place for beer and pasta. Wonderful French food. Great baguettes, fine French dining. And French is truly the official language there. I was thankful for my basic French speaking skills stored in my brain from high school.  " 

https://www.marathon-nouvellecaledonie.com/en/about/the-race