Olinda Alegria-Prévot: gearing up for the Marathon for All, a chance to run in the footsteps of Olympic athletes

Throughout this Olympic summer season, the newsletter team is pleased to present some of the Institut Pasteur staff who are playing a special role in this global event – whether in their capacity as an Institut Pasteur staff member, a volunteer or a sports person. We hope that these profiles will showcase the fantastic diversity of the Institut Pasteur community. This week, we are shining a light on Olinda Alegria-Prévot, who has earned a spot in the unique "Marathon for All" race and is gearing up to run in the footsteps of Olympic athletes on August 10!    

From lab to pavement: running against the clock and pushing her limits   

 

 

Although Olinda has taken part in several races and clocked up an impressive number of miles, her passion for running is a fairly recent development. In 2017, encouraged by one of her colleagues – the chair of the running section at the time –, Olinda decided to bite the bullet and swap her gloves and lab coat for running gear. During her lunch hour, trainers on and surrounded by members of the Institut Pasteur's running section, the biologist felt spurred on by her colleagues, and a few miles later, as she arrived at the Pont Alexandre, she was overwhelmed by a sense of satisfaction: "I did it!"

That day, the scientist, whose only previous running experience was dashing from one lab bench to another, found a new passion for a sport that reminded her a lot of science. "Being organized, pushing your limits, seeing an obstacle and working out how to dodge or overcome it, together as a team" – these were all values and principles that Olinda,  CNRS engineers, was used to applying on a daily basis in her research as a member of the Dynamic Regulation of Morphogenesis Unit.

 

Mile after mile, run after run, Olinda crossed countless finish lines. She also harnessed her newfound passion for a good cause, regularly running to raise money for Pasteurdon in the annual La Parisienne and "20km de Paris" races. 6km, 10km, 16km, 21km – the distances got longer, and she began running marathons. With humility, perseverance and also finely honed professional and personal organizational skills, Olinda came into her own with every stride. It was a real challenge for a "late starter," who by the time she began running was already a wife and mother. As she developed her sporting prowess, she had to strike a balance between family, career and running to stay the course, in every sense of the term.

A virtuous cycle soon began to form – the adrenaline, pride in her achievements and thirst for a challenge that built up with each run enabled Olinda to develop new skills and drew her out of herself. At the same time, her love for science and her work as a biological engineer guided her to look more deeply into sports nutrition, and she began making her own gels and energy bars tailored to her requirements!

Running in the footsteps of Olympians on August 10 in the Marathon for All

 

In the run-up to the 2024 Paris Olympics, Olinda decided to try to win a coveted spot in the "Marathon for All" race. Why shouldn't she try to run this marathon? But with so many people keen to participate, it was by no means certain. Participants would be selected based on a number of sporting challenges that would earn them points – "run 5km twice in one week," "run 10km once before Thursday," etc. Olinda was methodical, completing all of them, but she didn't know whether it would be enough. Resigned to the fact that she wouldn't be selected, she finally received the email and asked a colleague to read it to make sure she wasn't dreaming: she would be taking part!

So it's official: on August 10, Olinda will take to the start line as one of the 20,024 selected runners for a night-time course that will take in some of the emblematic sites and monuments of Paris and the Greater Paris region. 42.195km, 26 miles and 385 yards – the marathon course is spectacular, with a backdrop of the Louvre Pyramid, the Grand Palais, the Palace of Versailles, the Eiffel Tower and many more famous landmarks. During this memorable sporting event, she will experience what it's like to be a professional athlete – for the first time in history, the general public are being given the opportunity to run the Olympic marathon course on the same day as the Olympic athletes.

Although Olinda is training to make sure she is at peak fitness and able to finish a race that has some tough climbs at the beginning, she sees this as a marathon for pleasure – the cherry on the cake, a moment for celebration with her family and friends – and she is not aiming for a specific time. Seven years after running to the Pont Alexandre, it seems that nothing can stop Olinda – she has since started taking part in triathlons and is also preparing for the Valence marathon at the end of the year!