Some have misinterpreted my "That's all, folks" along with "Now I'll call it a day as far as running marathons is concerned" to mean that I've given up running altogether.
I even reinforced that impression by not writing here at all for a long time.
Well, nothing could be further from the truth. The crucial word that some have missed was "marathons". I was calling it a day as far as running marathons was concerned. Not running. So in fact I did keep on running, although with several interruptions and comebacks, which seem to have become the rule in this day and age (i.e. past half a century...) for me.
After a very difficult marathon in Rotterdam in April earlier this year, I decided that I didn't need to put myself through the pain of running marathons, so I would be running shorter races instead. The Scott2Run aggregate challenge was already in progress, but I was still in time to join the fray.
The challenge consists of 17 races held between March and early October in the Flemish part of the Brabant region. You compete with other athletes in your age and sex category by acquiring points depending on the placing you achieve in each race participation, final totals being based on the best 9 results for each athlete. This means that you need to complete 9 out of the 17 races to be eligible for a prize, which is given to the top 25 placed athletes in each category.
By the day I ran the marathon, I had already missed three races, and the following Sunday I thought it would be risky to do the fourth one - a 16 km - so the first available race was a 12 km race in an unheard of place called Tildonk, on 1st May, a public holiday on Wednesday. There were now 13 races left, of which I needed to complete 9, and one of the 13 was unavailable anyway since I would be away on summer vacation. So it was 12 races available, with the ever-present risk of injury or illness or not being able to participate in some of them for any number of reasons.
Well, here in this blog, a long while ago I decided to start to record my most memorable runs. I grew lazy in this, and I've been missing out on some of the good ones. In this post I'm recording collectively all the runs of this year's Scott2Run challenge, except for the last one, which is hopefully yet to happen, and each in their own way these runs have been quite remarkable. So here goes.
No. 1 - Wednesday 1 May - Tildonk - 12.6 km - 0h59:19. Two days later I had another race, an old favourite close to home, the Hoeilaart 11.2 km, but I thought that I couldn't afford to miss yet another race if I wanted to achieve my nine placings, and decided to participate in this one at training pace to notch up a couple of hundred points, and save up my energy for two days later and do Hoeilaart as well. It was one of the rare occasions when we had a warm sunny day this spring, and the event turned out to be a pleasant affair - three 4 km completely flat loops along country roads and pathways in an agricultural area. No warm up, just as in training runs, and I took it easy, just enjoying the pretty landscape and avoiding the slower runners at the back of the field. Of course, I ended up overtaking other runners, but took great care not to exert myself too much. I really should consider doing more of this type of relaxed "racing"...
No. 2 - Friday 3 May - Hoeilaart - 11.2 km - 0h51:27. The combination Tildonk/Hoeilaart over three days worked out fine. I wasn't tired at all from the race of two days previously, and here I could run a proper race, which I hadn't done for many months due to my preparation for April's marathon. It was my typical race when I do well, starting at a moderate pace just keeping up with the rest of my section of the field, avoiding the slower runners, and after the initial crowding thins out overtaking rivals one after the other, possibly until the end, when I have to find a kerb where to sit down, utterly exhausted, but satisfied that I've performed to 99% of my capacity.
No. 3 - Sunday 9 June - Sterrebeek - 10 km - 0h46:07. Recovering from a cold, yet again I was more concentrated on notching up points rather than racing proper. It's what kept me going at one particularly difficult point. It turned out that I notched the most points here at least from the first seven races.
No. 4 - Saturday 22 June - Machelen - 9 km - 0h39:52. I didn't do the Buizingen 12k, for no reason except that I don't like this particular route. It may have been an error, as it turned out, as I might even now not be able to obtain my nine placings because of this omission. But Machelen I did do, even though it's becoming a habit for me to lose my way until I get there... And I did it extremely well, though not as well as I thought at first. You see, the Belgians have rather a cavalier regard to race distances. Like, for example, this one, which was advertised as a 10 km run, so when I came in at less than 40 minutes I thought that I had run a lifetime best for a 10k at the age of 50! It couldn't be the case, of course, but it was still one of my best performances for several years, and my fastest pace achieved yet in this edition of the Scott2Run - 13.54 kph.
Summer break. Five placings to go, with six races available after the break. But during the holidays I had a silly accident. A badly assembled deckchair collapsed under my weight, and I fell on a horizontal metal bar with my back. I could barely walk afterwards and had to stop training for close to three weeks, but was lucky to escape a bad injury to my spine. Such was the "run-up" to:
No. 5 - Friday 9 August - Duisburg 10.2 km - 0h53:00. I would need to do at least one of this and the Zaventem half marathon, six days later, in order to be able to achieve nine placings for the final classification. My injury was almost healed, so I calculated that maybe I could try both events at training pace and just get the points. I barely managed the first one. It was a pleasant event on a summer Friday evening, with lots of beer and chips stalls, and posters abounding with pictures of a certain Suzy who was turning 50 on the day. If we saw her, the posters urged us, we were to give her a "kuss". The route was your typical Belgian convoluted affair among country lanes, rough paths consisting of dust, gravel, weeds or (worst of all) cobbles. I made it to the finish at faster than training pace, but not by much. Following this, I had to stop running again, as my injury wasn't over at all yet. The half marathon was out of the question, of course, but I had managed to get the points that mattered at Duisburg.
No. 6 - Friday 23 August - Vossem 11.7 km - 0h54:15. Many people say that summer in Belgium is a joke. But it isn't, and this event quite often happens at the peak of the summer heat. At 7 in the evening, the temperature was in the high 20s as we prepared for this race. My injury was now really over, and I had had enough training sessions to do this race at almost standard pace, starting off cautiously, but soon enough going through the overtaking routine, through rough country lanes then up and down many paths in the forest adjacent the Tervuren park. It was only in the last couple of hundred metres as we were racing back to Vossem that I had to slow down a bit, thoroughly exhausted, but happy at the entirely satisfactory end result. I was back in the running!
No. 7 - Sunday 1 September - Bertem 10.6 km - 0h48:11. This was a killer! The route was entirely along rough paths, much of the way on cobbles, gravel or dirt/dust/weeds, including some uphill sections, one of which was so steep we had to slow down to a walk. Going back to running after the steepest part, but still going uphill and breathless, required superhuman willpower... The road back down was cobbled, and followed by a (finally) asphalted stretch back to the start. This loop we did twice. A very tough race, where I registered another good performance.
No. 8 - Saturday 7 September - Overijse 14.6 km (advertised as 13 km...) - 1h08:48. My home race. I could jog from home to the start. Strangely enough, there weren't many participants in this, which worked to my advantage as it resulted in a higher number of points. Two loops, again quite hilly, cobbly at one stretch and literally running through fields at others. Typically tough and exhausting.
Now it's just one more race to go at Steenokkerzeel in early Octber, and I will have made it. Nine races and inclusion in the top 25 in the final classification, the last four placings being the only four yet available. A great feat for me, considering all the difficulties and setbacks. Only, that is, if I make it intact to the finish at Steenokkerzeel...
I even reinforced that impression by not writing here at all for a long time.
Well, nothing could be further from the truth. The crucial word that some have missed was "marathons". I was calling it a day as far as running marathons was concerned. Not running. So in fact I did keep on running, although with several interruptions and comebacks, which seem to have become the rule in this day and age (i.e. past half a century...) for me.
After a very difficult marathon in Rotterdam in April earlier this year, I decided that I didn't need to put myself through the pain of running marathons, so I would be running shorter races instead. The Scott2Run aggregate challenge was already in progress, but I was still in time to join the fray.
The challenge consists of 17 races held between March and early October in the Flemish part of the Brabant region. You compete with other athletes in your age and sex category by acquiring points depending on the placing you achieve in each race participation, final totals being based on the best 9 results for each athlete. This means that you need to complete 9 out of the 17 races to be eligible for a prize, which is given to the top 25 placed athletes in each category.
By the day I ran the marathon, I had already missed three races, and the following Sunday I thought it would be risky to do the fourth one - a 16 km - so the first available race was a 12 km race in an unheard of place called Tildonk, on 1st May, a public holiday on Wednesday. There were now 13 races left, of which I needed to complete 9, and one of the 13 was unavailable anyway since I would be away on summer vacation. So it was 12 races available, with the ever-present risk of injury or illness or not being able to participate in some of them for any number of reasons.
Well, here in this blog, a long while ago I decided to start to record my most memorable runs. I grew lazy in this, and I've been missing out on some of the good ones. In this post I'm recording collectively all the runs of this year's Scott2Run challenge, except for the last one, which is hopefully yet to happen, and each in their own way these runs have been quite remarkable. So here goes.
No. 1 - Wednesday 1 May - Tildonk - 12.6 km - 0h59:19. Two days later I had another race, an old favourite close to home, the Hoeilaart 11.2 km, but I thought that I couldn't afford to miss yet another race if I wanted to achieve my nine placings, and decided to participate in this one at training pace to notch up a couple of hundred points, and save up my energy for two days later and do Hoeilaart as well. It was one of the rare occasions when we had a warm sunny day this spring, and the event turned out to be a pleasant affair - three 4 km completely flat loops along country roads and pathways in an agricultural area. No warm up, just as in training runs, and I took it easy, just enjoying the pretty landscape and avoiding the slower runners at the back of the field. Of course, I ended up overtaking other runners, but took great care not to exert myself too much. I really should consider doing more of this type of relaxed "racing"...
No. 2 - Friday 3 May - Hoeilaart - 11.2 km - 0h51:27. The combination Tildonk/Hoeilaart over three days worked out fine. I wasn't tired at all from the race of two days previously, and here I could run a proper race, which I hadn't done for many months due to my preparation for April's marathon. It was my typical race when I do well, starting at a moderate pace just keeping up with the rest of my section of the field, avoiding the slower runners, and after the initial crowding thins out overtaking rivals one after the other, possibly until the end, when I have to find a kerb where to sit down, utterly exhausted, but satisfied that I've performed to 99% of my capacity.
No. 3 - Sunday 9 June - Sterrebeek - 10 km - 0h46:07. Recovering from a cold, yet again I was more concentrated on notching up points rather than racing proper. It's what kept me going at one particularly difficult point. It turned out that I notched the most points here at least from the first seven races.
No. 4 - Saturday 22 June - Machelen - 9 km - 0h39:52. I didn't do the Buizingen 12k, for no reason except that I don't like this particular route. It may have been an error, as it turned out, as I might even now not be able to obtain my nine placings because of this omission. But Machelen I did do, even though it's becoming a habit for me to lose my way until I get there... And I did it extremely well, though not as well as I thought at first. You see, the Belgians have rather a cavalier regard to race distances. Like, for example, this one, which was advertised as a 10 km run, so when I came in at less than 40 minutes I thought that I had run a lifetime best for a 10k at the age of 50! It couldn't be the case, of course, but it was still one of my best performances for several years, and my fastest pace achieved yet in this edition of the Scott2Run - 13.54 kph.
Summer break. Five placings to go, with six races available after the break. But during the holidays I had a silly accident. A badly assembled deckchair collapsed under my weight, and I fell on a horizontal metal bar with my back. I could barely walk afterwards and had to stop training for close to three weeks, but was lucky to escape a bad injury to my spine. Such was the "run-up" to:
No. 5 - Friday 9 August - Duisburg 10.2 km - 0h53:00. I would need to do at least one of this and the Zaventem half marathon, six days later, in order to be able to achieve nine placings for the final classification. My injury was almost healed, so I calculated that maybe I could try both events at training pace and just get the points. I barely managed the first one. It was a pleasant event on a summer Friday evening, with lots of beer and chips stalls, and posters abounding with pictures of a certain Suzy who was turning 50 on the day. If we saw her, the posters urged us, we were to give her a "kuss". The route was your typical Belgian convoluted affair among country lanes, rough paths consisting of dust, gravel, weeds or (worst of all) cobbles. I made it to the finish at faster than training pace, but not by much. Following this, I had to stop running again, as my injury wasn't over at all yet. The half marathon was out of the question, of course, but I had managed to get the points that mattered at Duisburg.
No. 6 - Friday 23 August - Vossem 11.7 km - 0h54:15. Many people say that summer in Belgium is a joke. But it isn't, and this event quite often happens at the peak of the summer heat. At 7 in the evening, the temperature was in the high 20s as we prepared for this race. My injury was now really over, and I had had enough training sessions to do this race at almost standard pace, starting off cautiously, but soon enough going through the overtaking routine, through rough country lanes then up and down many paths in the forest adjacent the Tervuren park. It was only in the last couple of hundred metres as we were racing back to Vossem that I had to slow down a bit, thoroughly exhausted, but happy at the entirely satisfactory end result. I was back in the running!
No. 7 - Sunday 1 September - Bertem 10.6 km - 0h48:11. This was a killer! The route was entirely along rough paths, much of the way on cobbles, gravel or dirt/dust/weeds, including some uphill sections, one of which was so steep we had to slow down to a walk. Going back to running after the steepest part, but still going uphill and breathless, required superhuman willpower... The road back down was cobbled, and followed by a (finally) asphalted stretch back to the start. This loop we did twice. A very tough race, where I registered another good performance.
No. 8 - Saturday 7 September - Overijse 14.6 km (advertised as 13 km...) - 1h08:48. My home race. I could jog from home to the start. Strangely enough, there weren't many participants in this, which worked to my advantage as it resulted in a higher number of points. Two loops, again quite hilly, cobbly at one stretch and literally running through fields at others. Typically tough and exhausting.
Now it's just one more race to go at Steenokkerzeel in early Octber, and I will have made it. Nine races and inclusion in the top 25 in the final classification, the last four placings being the only four yet available. A great feat for me, considering all the difficulties and setbacks. Only, that is, if I make it intact to the finish at Steenokkerzeel...
