When selecting his first marathon, Christophe set his sights on participation in one of the most prestigious and fastest in the world, the BMW Berlin Marathon.
So it was that on Sunday 24 September 2017, he lined up for the start of this race with 45,000 participants from 135 countries.
His initial goal was to complete the 42.195 kms in 3 hr 53 min (5 min 30 sec per km), but he was pleasantly surprised by achieving an even better performance than planned, covering the distance in 3 hr 44 min (5 min 16 sec per km) allowing him to finish in a respectable 9901th place among the 39,000 finishers of this international competition.
Although he believes that he will be able to improve on this time when he runs his next race, the London Marathon, he readily admits to feeling a certain satisfaction that there are still 18 months to go; he weighs in at 95 kg with a height of 1.73 m and had not participated in any sport whatsoever for the last 25 years.