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!