Running through a retirement home is just one of the many surreal moments that participants signing up for the Nîmes Urban Trail (NUT) get to experience on this 24km race around the city, which takes place each February. I’ve participated in the Lyon Urban Trail for the last three years, pounding up and down stairs, helter-skeltering down the muddy slope of the city’s former ski piste, la Sarra, and jogging through the grounds of old forts. The people running the full marathon had been released into the (urban) wild half an hour earlier; I, surrounded by gladiators and crocodiles, was about to tackle the shorter, but still hilly, 24km race.