A Marathon in a Day of a Therapist’s Life

This is the third time that CSG06 was present at the Nice Cannes Marathon.

The first year, in 2018, we entered as part of the Mimosa Matters relay team. In 2019, we had our own relay team, and this year, we had a relay team plus two runners for the full marathon.

Preparation started around September when we needed to determine who wanted to participate. An ongoing WhatsApp group was created to share updates and news.

This year, we had runners from various parts of Europe: Shaun and Olivia flew in from the UK, Christian came from Italy, and Ale, Lesley, Joshua, Megan, and Sus were locally based.

As always, things started gently, just like the marathon itself. Around September, we began reminding people that we were two months away, only to find ourselves rushing like crazy as the marathon suddenly approached within a week.

What was the mad rush about, you may ask?

Runners needed to be registered, medical certificates obtained, T-shirts ordered and printed with CSG06 logos. This year, Victoria provided ribbons with the names of clients we had helped, which runners pinned to their shirts. There were photoshoots, and our fundraising campaign began—through Facebook, emails, our website, and one-on-one conversations—anything that could inspire generosity toward our association.

We were greatly helped by Ale, who, as always, took charge of registrations, reminded participants to send their details, and travelled to Nice to collect kits for everyone.

Shaun handled the ordering of Puma T-shirts, which he insisted were more comfortable than previous brands, along with printing the logos.

Anna became our chauffeur on marathon day, picking up relay runners at their designated points and shuttling them to the finish line in Cannes.

John generously offered his services as a photographer and captured some of our best photos yet.

Saturday was Synchronizing Day: we all met at HQ to finalize every last detail for the big day. This included estimating relay times to ensure smooth handovers, planning pick-up points in restricted areas, coordinating the transport of bags with changing gear, organizing transfers to Nice, distributing marathon packs and ribbons, ensuring everyone had their T-shirts and water bottles, and setting up WhatsApp geolocation tracking.

Finally, the runners gathered for their pre-marathon photos…

The only one who was missing was Christian who that day was racing in Croatia in the Twingo Cup! He finally managed to drive back to Milan in the afternoon and board a train to Nice arriving on Sunday (the M-day) at 1am! For many, the day started very early—5 AM! Anna arrived at 6 AM to pick up Shaun and me. Christian called at 5:30 AM, asking what he should eat before the run. He was told to forget the Kinder Bueno and have some pasta instead!

By 6:30 AM, we picked him up and headed to our meeting point at Carrefour, where John and Sus joined us. Then, we set off for Nice, hoping the rest of the team would reach their relay positions (St Laurent du Var, Cagnes sur Mer, Villeneuve Loubet, Antibes, and Golfe Juan) without any trouble.

There is always something magical about arriving in Nice before sunrise, with thousands of people converging on the same point from all directions. No, there was no social distancing while getting through security! Check out the live feed on our Facebook page.

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At 8.15 the start. Over 10,000 people got off on the right foot and started the adventure.

John and I tried to get to the various relay stations, but we only managed Villeneuve Loubet where we saw Olivia exchanging with Megan .

Plenty of photos were taken then.

We also managed to quickly get to Antibes but too late to see Megan relaying with Joshua!

So, we went straight to Cannes where we met up with Sus, Ale, Joshua, Olivia and Lesley, waiting for Shaun to finish in just 4 hours, and then Christian, who without the Kinder Bueno managed to finish in 6 hours!!

Congratulations to our team and see you all next year!

Eli Cookson