Running in the clouds

On a misty, chilly mid-November dawn I set out to get back on track in my preparation for a marathon some time in spring of next year. It was more than five weeks since I'd last run for more than an hour, including three weeks without any training at all due to a bad backache that, literally, floored me. So I was quite apprehensive about my level of fitness barely ten days after having resumed training. Eight years, almost to the day, after moving to Belgium, I was about to partake of a great spectacle, laid out especially for my comeback long run by my adopted home country.

From the edge of Hoeilaart I set out towards the Foret de Soignes, where the colourful Belgian autumn was in full display. It's the last few days before autumn gives way to a wintry landscape. The forest paths are covered by a carpet of fallen red, brown and yellow leaves, but there are still enough leaves clinging to the branches to complete an all-round spectacle, on the ground and up above.

In some places it was very foggy, but there were clear patches. I was practically running from one low-lying cloud to the another. I was so enthralled with the spectacle that I forgot all about my level of fitness and the 5-week gap in long distance running.

At one point, the rising sun broke through a multitude of tree trunks and branches in front of me, adding a golden aura to my run.

Glorious!

I managed to run the 90 minutes back to the starting point. The plan was that if I felt strong enough after 90 minutes I would add a second, shorter loop, for a possible total of 2 hours, i.e. the long run I was doing  five weeks earlier, before the injury. So I ran an additional 15 minutes in the opposite direction towards Overijse and then turned back, et voilà - simple, really - two hours done and my long distance training is back on track. Great run!

Sore leg muscles...

Bang on cue, on turning 50 I'm having to come to terms with what I'll call OOA - the Onset of Old Age.

Well, if you're a runner you know how it is with injuries. You carry out a training programme, doing progress towards a given goal, but you're always prone to injury or illness, which forces you to take a break from training.

With OOA it's exactly like that for me, but the other way round. As a general rule I'm injured, but every now and then I take a break from injury to do some training.

I may be exaggerating, but it's not far from the real situation. Since April, when I ran the Madrid marathon, I've had to take long breaks from running, first due to a seemingly never-ending cold, then a pain in the knee that slowed my walk to a limp, and most recently a severe back pain that immobilised me almost completely.

This latest mishap floored me, literally at the worst point, and very nearly metaphorically as well. It's so frustrating to carefully build up your training over a long period of time and then to lose the fitness and endurance gained after so much hard work, having to start all over again after succumbing to an injury or illness. I almost concluded that maybe the time has arrived when I should hang up my running shoes and call it a day.

But, deep in my heart, I knew that after recovery I would resume my training, and by the first sign that my back muscles were back to their good old normal fragile self I went out into the street for a five-minute jog. The following day I did 18 minutes and today 30 minutes. It's such a good sensation to feel the soreness in my leg muscles again!

No, retirement can wait a few more decades. So many thousands of marathon runners are over 50, over 55, over 60, even over 70, and as long as I'm healthy I'm going to compete with them. So, no, dear Mr OOA, Sir, you'll have to do much worse than what you've thrown at me this year to make me stop running.

Nijlen half marathon - 3 June 2012 - 1h41:26

It was thanks to England's Queen Elizabeth II's diamond jubilee, and to Google, that I came to know about Nijlen, a little town in the north of Belgium, a few kilometres to the east of Antwerp.

Queen Elizabeth’s diamond jubilee is being celebrated in the UK by having a nation-wide party plus a bank holiday, which for a Maltese friend of mine, Danica, who studies and works there, meant an extra long weekend of leisure time. So why not go out and about for some exploration in Europe? She chose Brussels (of all places...) and came to know that I'm hiding out here in the vicinity of the Belgian capital.

I suggested we do a long run together, but her idea was to find a race in Brussels, which would add to her impressive palmarès. I didn’t know and couldn’t find any in our area the first weekend in June, so I widened the Google search to include the whole of Belgium, and this was what brought up the half marathon of Nijlen on Sunday 3rd June.

After a lengthy spell of warm, sunny weather, Sunday 3rd June dawned a grey, cold and rainy day. Lovely! No, not really. It was raining heavily at a certain stage in the morning, but by early afternoon at the start of the race it was just grey and miserable but not wet: excellent conditions for a good run...

It was not even windy, the field of participants was not crowded and the course turned out to be, as you should expect in northern Flanders, perfectly flat. The only problem, as far as I was concerned, was my lack of proper preparation for this race. Six weeks before I had run a marathon in Madrid, but after that I had a series of setbacks, ailments and minor injuries that forced me to take several breaks from training. The only long run I did for a whole six weeks was 2 hours the weekend before. So I approached this race with quite a bit of uncertainty – I would be happy just to complete the distance, which would serve as a useful long run in the build-up to my next marathon.

It turned out, and I’ll certainly keep this in mind for the future, that it takes a good while to lose the considerable endurance gained from training for a marathon. The event consisted of a 5km race, a 10km (one and two loops respectively) and the 21.1km (four loops) run simultaneously. Every kilometre was marked by a signboard and, this being a four-loop event, it led to a proliferation of apparently random kilometre markings. In between various 16km, 7km, etc, however, I also passed by a 1km signboard, eventually 2km, and so on. It helped keep me concentrated on the distance covered and enabled be to treat the race as a tempo run by measuring the number of seconds gained on the 5min/km pace at each km marker.

As mentioned earlier, the course was flat and covered a mix of residential and country lanes. I liked this four-loop route. It really helped me stay concentrated. At the latter part of the third lap I started to slow down a bit and was overtaken by a number of rivals; but I was not really tired, so I decided that on the final lap I would forget about the watch and go out to catch those who had just passed me. As it turned out, I only caught up with a lady rival with whom I had had an overtaking battle earlier on. As I regained the lead on her I almost missed an important turn. It was only the shouted warning “Meneer, meneer, rechts Dutch-Flemish-double Dutch!”, by a cyclist who was accompanying my rival, that saved me from going off course. It was very sporting of him, I have to say.

I didn’t overtake anyone else but I finished strongly, fearing a final comeback by my lady rival, which never materialised. I crossed the line at 1h41:26 – not a hugely impressive time but not too bad either, considering my recent lack of training and no speedwork at all for so many months. I had entered this Nijlen half marathon with misgivings but it turned out to be a pleasant event, with the added bonus that I’ve received a great morale boost as far as my running form is concerned.

Thanks to Queen Elizabeth II, thanks to Google, and thanks to my good friend Danica, who, in the meantime, completed the half marathon no less than 13 minutes earlier than me at a personal best of 1h28, which earned her 3rd prize in the ladies’ category. Well done, Danica!

¡Campeones!

¡Vamos! ¡Animo! ¡Bravo! ¡Arriva, arriva! ¡Campeones!

These were some of the cries that accompanied many thousands of us for most of 3 and a half hours (in my case) as we were running the Madrid marathon last Sunday 22nd April. The supporters were enthusiastic, at times even too much so as they encroached on the course leaving barely enough space for the runners to pass. It was certainly uplifting, and the exact opposite of the grumpy, indifferent, sometimes bordering on hostile spirit shown by some waiters and hotel staff during my long weekend in Madrid, but that's another story.

Admittedly, the "Campeones" may have had something to do with the fact that just a few hours earlier Real Madrid had just beaten Barcelona in the latest El Clasico that fired up the nation's imagination the evening before, and thereby almost certainly taking the Spanish football championship away from their arch rivals. There was an air of elation in Madrid that morning (not shared, of course, by the waiters...) highlighted for example by the fact that just a few minutes into the marathon a group of runners burst out chanting, to much general hilarity, "Campeones, campeones, olè, olè, olè..."

Apart from some strange organisational quirks (more about this later) and a heart- and leg-sapping 5km uphill stretch almost at the very end, it was an enjoyable experience. In spite of being hemmed in by about 20,000 other participants, including those for a 10km race, we were able to start running at a normal pace almost at once. My target pace was 5 minutes per kilometre, and the plan was to go a bit slower in the first 6km (also uphill), gain a few seconds each km for the next 30km that were generally downhill, and hope for the best in the uphill stretch at the end.

The plan worked admirably well except for the hope-for-the-best bit. I remember actually looking forward to the point when my watch would show it was clearly impossible to reach the target time, so that I could then simply concentrate on covering the distance and forget the time splits. They were not an easy final 6km at all, but I never stopped running, which is not what can be said for many others who had slowed down to a walk.

It takes all sorts... Close to the finishing line I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw a man running the final few hundred metres of the marathon carrying his young son on his shoulders! How could he ever do that? I could barely carry my own weight at that point, although I did manage to finish in a respectable 3h34:31, at around 2600th place from close to 10,000 finishers.

Then we had to trudge for what seemed like eternity to get to our clothes bag, placed even further away from the nearest metro stop. We had had to deposit this bag containing our clothes and belongings there just before the start and then use public transport to get to the starting point of the marathon, a good 2 to 3km away, wearing just our running gear in the still chilly morning temperature. At the hotel, we had ever so kindly been offered a bus trip from the hotel to the start of the marathon, but not for our clothes bag that would presumably fly by itself towards the finishing line...

Such logistical irritations, that needed resolving through careful forward planning, and a pre-marathon pasta party that I wouldn't wish upon my worst enemy, did not mar in any way what was a largely pleasant experience.

Ah, yes, the rock'n'roll theme. Never mind. I went to Madrid to run a marathon there, and run a marathon is what I did, but I did get myself a funky tee-shirt, a handy sports bag and a glittery, rock'n'rolly medal.

Adios, Espana. I will now look forward to my fourteenth marathon.

http://es.competitor.com/madrid/madrid-splash/?lang=en

The run-up to Madrid...

After more than 6 months it's certainly well past the time for an update. Our good friend Ernest Ellis has graced the front page of this blog for long enough now...

Early February - Les Hivernales de Boitsfort - 20km - 1h31:37
I wasn't in the mood to write at the time, but this was an exhilarating race. We were just beginning to enter the peak of winter, the landscape was covered in snow: it was quite spectacular. The ground conditions weren't so bad either as the snow hadn't thawed and refroze or anything like that - it was still fresh and uncompacted. It probably slowed us down somewhat, especially going uphill, but still I enjoyed this race tremendously. Of course, the fact that I kept a steady pace and never felt tired at all was an important factor in my enjoyment.

Beautiful race. Yet again, thank you Royal Racing Club de Bruxelles. At five successive participations, this is by far the event I've done most in Belgium and definitely one of my favourite races here.

24 March - Parkloop Sparta, Vilvoorde - 12km - 0h55:30
In Belgium, spring has an uncanny habit of arriving exactly on schedule. This year was no exception, and since quite a few days now we're enjoying some fantastic weather. After so many months of running in the cold, it's so refreshing to be able to go out wearing just shorts and a vest.

Today marked the start of a new season for the Scott2run competition. I remember Vilvoorde very well from last year, so this time the steep uphill tracks were not a surprise and I was well prepared for them. I had in mind last year's time, which I wanted to beat, and I was doing good progress, overtaking many rivals without overexerting myself. In the last kilometre I set my sight on a last rival whom I could possibly overtake, so I imagined that he was myself running the same race last year. If I overtook him, I would improve my time over last year, I thought.

My imagination wasn't very far off the mark, at all: I did manage to overtake this guy by a handful of seconds, by almost exactly the same time that I clipped off of last year's effort!