Zaventem half marathon - 1h38:55

Most people consider summer in Belgium to be a bit of a joke. "Summer? What summer?" they will say. This idea is apparently shared by Dwars door Zaventem, the organisers of the annual Zaventem half marathon that takes place on 15 August, the main summer holiday in Europe. It must be the reason why they don't choose a different time for the race, which takes place at the peak of the afternoon heat starting at 2 p.m.

To be fair, today happened to be abnormally hot. The maximum temperature has been in the low twenties since quite a few days, but it went up to around 30 C precisely on the day of the half marathon. Still, surely it's not unheard of that temperatures tend to be hot in the afternoon at the peak of summer. Would it be such a bad idea then for a half marathon in mid-August to start at, say, 10 a.m. rather than at 2 p.m.?

Whatever - 2 p.m. it was, and that's when I joined the small crowd of long distance diehards at the starting line, under a scorching sun at the edge of the communal park in Zaventem. I had known since close to a week that it would be very hot today, so I was well prepared, having taken a lot of water, plus poured another bottle over the top of my head to cool me down.

Having had a few disappointments in racing recently, owing to having started too fast, my aim today, also given the prevailing conditions, would be simply to complete the run, without aiming for any spectacular finishing time. So I positioned myself in the middle of the pack, and for a good while simply ran along with them, trying not to exert myself at all. It was a bit the same way as I run a marathon.

It was amusing how many runners were jostling to secure a place wherever there was a little bit of shade. Zaventem is famous for hosting the "Brussels" international airport, but I was quite surprised that neither at the start nor during the run was this evident at all. In fact Zaventem turned out to be a typical Flemish town with the main feature (apart from the airport) being the church, and consisting mainly of residential streets, parks and cycling lanes.

To my huge relief we didn't have any treacherous forest paths to negotiate. It was simply terra firma all the way, and also relatively flat, so I could easily settle into the steady pace for which I had been aiming. For the first time ever, I stopped at water stations, where we were (yet again) offered water in cups. I was prepared for this too, and had already decided I couldn't afford to spill the precious fluid. I would stop for 5 seconds to gulp down the entire contents of the cup and resume my run. Four such stops would only cost me 20 seconds, and were more than worthwhile since the alternative would be to eventually give up due to dehydration.

In the middle part of the race I gained quite a few positions. As I passed one particular runner, he jokingly told me "professional", and I replied, "well, almost but not quite...". But in fact I was doing well, and soon realised that there were just 5 km remaining. I hadn't overtaken anyone for a good stretch, and after another kilometre decided this was the time when I could push myself a bit more, encouraged by the fact that I had been told that the final 4 km were mostly downhill.

I'm still undecided whether it was the right decision. I did, in fact, overtake various other rivals, but with 2 km to go my steam ran out, and they were a very tough final 2 km. As if this wasn't enough, there was a 'sting' in the final few hundred metres, as we had to do a loop in the park, part of which was a rather steep hill, turning into a finishing downhill stretch on the grass. Still, no one overtook me at all in those last 2 km, so I suppose in fact I actually gained a few positions by deciding to force the pace.

What a race! A half marathon under the hot afternoon sun in mid-August, with the temperature in the shade at 29 C. Unfortunately, there was no complimentary beer or wine or memento here either. They gave us an apple. Maybe they're concerned for our health, although there was lots of beer for sale... I also got a ticket for a lottery ("tombola") with prizes including a mountain bike. The draw would take place two hours later, at 6. I didn't have a single cent on me, so I staggered towards the car and drove back home. I probably won the mountain bike, but wasn't there to claim the prize. I still have the tombola ticket, number 720.