So I'm running a marathon...!

No, seriously.

In what could easily be described as either an uncharacteristic stroke of sporting ambition or a far more characteristic stroke of unbelievable stupidity, I've just signed up to run the Médoc marathon in a few months' time. Alongside my good friends Bridget and Carlos, I'll be spending the summer preparing for something I've wanted to do for as long as I can remember- a long, painful 26-mile slog for charity, pride, and boasting rights at dinner parties.

It's not for a few months yet so I'll probably start bugging you all for money slightly nearer the time, by which point I'll hopefully be a bit more prepared for this whole thing. Right now, a 26-mile run already seems impossible enough for someone as worryingly unfit as me, so I was pretty horrified when I saw that the Marathon du Médoc actually prides itself on being 'the longest marathon in the world.' After some slightly panicked research, it thankfully turned out that they haven't just thrown a couple of extra miles on the end for good measure- 'le plus long du monde' is actually best translated here as 'the world's slowest,' with runners encouraged to focus on soaking up the atmosphere rather than setting the fastest time.

There's orchestras on pretty much every single street corner, with ice-cream, cheese and even foods like steak and oysters offered to runners en-route. What's more, there's wine-tasting stalls dotted every couple of miles along the course, making it possibly the most quintessentially French sporting experience imaginable. It'd be easy to make some sort of joke here about the French not even being able to stop drinking and sober up for a marathon, but I'd thought that'd be unnecessarily stereotypical and offensive.

Oh so classy

Not so, apparently. Even the event's official homepage features a cartoon runner drunkenly stumbling along the course with a bottle in hand, so the oddly-enticing idea of completing a tipsy marathon remains a possibility. Fancy dress is compulsory too, which seems to be a cunning trick to try and distract participants from the terrifying reality of running 42 kilometres with a stomach full of red wine and steak. Right now, it's not working.

Not that I've got anything against fancy dress. Very much the opposite, in fact- having recently celebrated a friend's birthday by handing out home-made eggy bread in the city centre while dressed up with a suit, shades and cigar as one of four members of the 'French Toast Mafia,' I'm actually pretty excited about the whole costume thing. That said, Bordeaux's not a huge city, and the worryingly large number of my students who saw our mini-Mafia patrolling the city on Saturday afternoon has already resulted in an unfortunate number of classroom witticisms at my expense.

Not that I'll have to worry about that for too much longer. My contract finishes in April, leaving me with less than six weeks of teaching left and I've got no doubt that come the beginning of May my life will be far more laid-back than it is right now. The various stresses of being a teacher in France were exemplified perfectly this week with a event I'd never been told or warned about- 'Le Père Cent.'

'Le Père Cent' is the name for the day one hundred days before the beginning of the Baccalaureate- it signifies the beginning of study leave for Terminale (final year) students across the country. For reasons unknown, students nationwide celebrate it every year by running out in the streets and throwing flour and eggs at random passers-by, making it a pretty hazardous day to be outside even if you're not working at a school. Naturally, being a teacher makes you a prize target for vengeful teenagers, meaning that many lessons are cancelled and some schools are even closed completely as teachers across the country cower under their beds at home.

But despite that and all the other various difficulties life as a teacher has entailed... I've loved it. Whatever I end up doing career-wise in the future, I can't ever imagine working anywhere more vibrant, dynamic or fascinating than the school I've spent the last six months at. Admittedly teaching teenagers is a bit of a challenge, but I feel I've learnt more from my time here than I have working anywhere else and I'll be absolutely gutted to leave. Weirdly, more than anything I'll miss the cheeky classes- the ones that always manage to learn something but seem to have fun at the same time. Probably the most memorable example of one such class came up just last week, when I was playing a game where each student took it in turns to add a single word to a story on the whiteboard. I'm sure you'll agree the result was a work of narrative genius.

One day I'll learn to stop playing these silly games

Regardless, assuming I don't end up becoming part of some extraterrestrial banquet over the next few weeks, my contract is about to come to an end and my official 'year abroad' will be over. Most language assistants I've met here will be heading home as the holidays approach; visas expire, summer jobs begin and lives simply move on.

But me? Not yet.

Sure, running a marathon in September is going to be a huge challenge, but now I'm staying until then it's far from the only one I'm going to have to face. As most of the incredible, English-speaking friends I've made here all start to leave, I'll finally have to face up to the one thing I really came to France for; total French language immersion. And while that's still an absolutely terrifying prospect, it's an opportunity- and it's an opportunity I'm now committed to tackling head-on.

So even if my official year abroad finishes in a few weeks... I'm not going anywhere. I'll head back to England for a few weeks, sure, but I've got things to do here before I go home. Find a job. Run a marathon. Learn some French, goddammit.

Summer in the south of France? Oh, go on then.