“Hello, this is Guillaume, the marathon world record holder in reverse. I don’t know if it’s more pride and embarrassment to present myself like this. » When he called us back this Wednesday, three days after breaking a hell of a record in retrorunning (42 km covered in 3h25 against 3h38), on the « classic » marathon of Saint-Paul-lès-Romans (Drôme), Guillaume de Lustrac immediately assumed the quirky side of his performance. This 29-year-old man from Isère, consultant in carbon footprint and ecological transition, tells 20 minutes how it tasted to unlikely challenges alongside his fiancée Constance. And how he has just made his entry into Guinness, thanks to a discipline for which he has only been training for four months.
What were your biggest challenges so far, before starting the Saint-Paul-lès-Romans marathon on Sunday?
I participated in ultra-cycling races like the Race across France (2,500 km from Le Touquet to Mandelieu), for which Constance was a volunteer. Last summer, I also did a triple Ironman, with 12 km in Lake Annecy, 600 km of cycling from Annecy to Périgueux, then 126 km of running from Périgueux to Bordeaux, all in 63 hours. With Constance, we like to highlight the beauty of the French territory through sporting challenges in off. We are both aware of ecology, and the message is that there is no need to go to the other side of the planet to try a difficult challenge. This time, it was not a challenge for the planet but something to laugh with friends.
How did this strange idea of running a marathon in reverse come about, exactly?
In December, I had a pretty good time in the Valencia marathon (Spain) with 2h33. We then started looking at the somewhat funny world records that could exist with my friend Duncan Perrillat (French marathon champion). As I like the challenges that one thinks at the start almost impossible, Duncan warmed me up for the marathon record in reverse. He launched a bet via an Instagram story on January 1: if there were more than 1,000 comments, then I started. As another friend, biathlete Fabien Claude, shared this story, it was over (smile). Finally, it was not much, with 1,006 comments stack before the end of the 24 hours of the story.
You would not have gone to the end of the adventure without this thousand comments?
Frankly, I don’t know, maybe I would have done two or three training sessions back. As I would have seen that it swelled me, I would not have pushed this delirium. At first it’s not a lot of fun, and even after that when you get used to it actually. You quickly realize how much better it is to run forward.
Has the switch to retrorunning cost you any injuries?
My knees quickly hurt. An osteo buddy made me realize that I was probably doing shit. I really wondered whether or not to continue this challenge. I especially stopped running forward because it was the forward-backward alternation that really hurt me. You have to learn to use the arch of the foot, which you hardly feel in the forward race. There, at first, I felt like I was walking on glass.
What exactly did your first training sessions look like?
For my first session on January 2, I only did 500m twice. I felt like I was rediscovering running, as if I were an absolute beginner. I increased the distances little by little, with sessions uphill, split, and up to a training of 33 km. I did all my preparation with Constance, so she was always by my side to let me know when there was a hole, a dog or a bike. She was really my eyes.
Do you ever have to look back to succeed in this unusual discipline?
As little as possible anyway. It’s a bit of a secret because it still takes energy to do it. Even muscularly, it ends up pulling on the hips. At the end of the marathon, since the brain was starting to be a little less irrigated with blood, I trusted my friends less, so instinctively I turned around more often.
What difference in pace have you personally noticed between forward and reverse?
At the Valencia marathon, I was at 3’36/km, and there I shot at 4’51/km. It is therefore significantly slower. The previous world record (3h38), made by the specialist in retrorunning, the German Markus Jürgens, was 5’11/km and I personally had no benchmark of pace behind.
How was your attempt at a crossed record received on a marathon programmed in the “good” way?
We warned the organizers in advance that I was aiming for the world record. All the volunteers were therefore aware and they encouraged us throughout the event. People even came to watch the race just to see… the phenomenon (laughs)!
What were your exchanges with the “classic” participants?
I sensed disbelief in most of them. Two participants did the first part of the race with me, telling me when I needed to shift a little to the left or to the right. It wasn’t too much, even though I already had three friends by my side. Ten meters after the starting line, I gave myself a good scare by taking a queen and being close to falling. Like what I did well to choose this uncrowded marathon (150 participants). In Paris, I would have eaten an incredible number of people.
Finally, what was your overall ranking on Sunday?
I finished 19th, so I wasn’t supposed to be on the podium. But the organizers invited me to go up there to blow up the Clairette de Die.
How difficult were you, during and after the race, compared to a forward marathon?
I really started to suffer on the last seven kilometres. Then in the night from Sunday to Monday, even when I was sleeping, it hurt my muscles. I was treated to the same pain as the day after a marathon, but with the arch of the foot and the toes that burned, and the hips that also took the fare. But on Tuesday, I went back to running 6 km, this time in a good way! I’m going to leave retrorunning aside, although it’s possible that I’ll take part in some cool backwards races in the future that have already invited me.
You had already completed several big challenges, but this is your first world record. What does it actually change?
Maybe that formalizes the fact that I’m the king of idiots (laughs)! Otherwise, I don’t really get extra pride points. There is just a media craze that I had never experienced before, that’s all.
A month ago, the general public discovered Aurélien Sanchez, the first French finisher in the history of the Barkley (ultra-trail race of 200 km and 20,000 m of elevation gain in the United States). This week you are…
It’s incomparable, he made a sick perf, and I an idiot perf (laughs). My goal was to make my friends laugh, and I think it succeeded. I also receive lots of messages from people who find this challenge funny or even brilliant, and others from people who don’t understand delirium. In this somewhat anxiety-provoking climate, particularly about pensions, if I was able to make people laugh for five minutes, I’m already very happy. I’m not a high-level athlete, I’m not sponsored, I have a job on the side, I’m an ordinary person.