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!
