The humble 10k training run

The scene of a thousand runs.

I'm always writing about races, marathons, important long runs... and yet, most of my runs, by far, consist of the routine 10 km training run. It's only appropriate, I'm thinking, that I should record one post about this, a run that is equally important as the long runs that lead up to any particular long distance running event.

The 10 km training run is the filler that consolidates the endurance obtained by means of the long run. It ensures continuity of my running activity. Three times every week, I go out of the front door either for a straightforward easy (recovery) run that lasts around 55 minutes or for a 'quality' run which includes running at a fast pace.

By now, my running career spans a good quarter of a century. Throughout the years, the route of my standard 10k training run has changed according to where I was living. In the early days it used to start where there's the "LOVE" atrocity at Spinola Bay and followed the St Julian's, Sliema and Gżira coast towards Manoel Island and back. I still make it a point to run along parts of this route whenever I'm in Malta. It's surely the area most frequented by runners and joggers in Malta.

In my 'second' life in Belgium, my standard 10k started off as a cold and dark double loop early in the morning in Ixelles, to be replaced by much more pleasant variations at the Bois de la Cambre and the adjacent Forêt de Soignes. Then over to Hoeilaart and two alternatives: towards the same Forêt de Soignes but from the opposite direction, or towards Overijse and the straight road leading to Huldenberg.

But that's history. Now we seem to have established ourselves at the edge of Overijse, close to Hoeilaart. A steep hill creates a physical barrier from Hoeilaart, so my 10k has now been oriented towards Jezus Eik and the adjacent Arboretum. The fact that I work from home makes it possible for me to start my run at lunchtime, which is much more convenient than the early morning or the evening. I go up a slight uphill, then along a road running parallel to the E411 motorway, across a flyover spanning the motorway towards the main commercial street in Overijse, and soon enough into the Arboretum - the forest.

It takes me 18 minutes to leave the streets and enter the forest paths. That's too much, but the alternative would be to drive and start at the edge of the forest, which would be inconvenient for a daily run. That leaves 19 minutes of running in the forest and another 18 minutes to go back home. The forest section consists of a winding path to begin with, followed by a long straight with large trees on both sides, then a turn to the left into a picturesque S-shaped path leading down and back up to another path, which goes back to the first winding path. It's a pleasant route, marred just a bit by the occasional unleashed dog and one rather stony passage.

It's my standard run, and the way things stand, if I keep running for as long as I intend to do, it may well turn out to be the route I've run most. Literally a thousand times or more.

Les Hivernaltes de Boitsfort 20 km - 7 February 2016

I had not run this race, one of my ‘early’ favourites in Belgium, since several years. This time I thought it would serve as good race practice ahead of my upcoming marathon in 8 weeks’ time. It would also delay by one week my build up of long runs, which would otherwise peak one week too early. And serve as a welcome break from very long runs, which I have now been doing without fail since I can’t remember when.

Although I could have thought of a somewhat more restful “break”. This hardly qualifies as a break at all. A 20 km race on a hilly route cannot be considered to be a rest. The really effective rest period will probably happen the next 5 days with no running at all while on a sightseeing visit to Montenegro.

They have a habit of changing race routes in Belgium. Les Hivernales is no exception. This year’s was at least the third different version of the route that I can remember out of my six participations to date. The initial loop around the streets of Boitsfort was a bit more extended this time. It gave us the chance to get really warmed up before embarking up the hill into the Foret des Soignes. There, we followed the usual fairly steeply undulating route which, this year, instead of going out to a narrow path adjacent to the road, turned back into the forest. This was a good idea.

This route change didn’t catch me by surprise as I had already had a look at it on the organisers’ website. So I was already bracing myself for a probable steep hill and, sure enough, at around the ninth kilometre following a long fast downhill stretch, we went down into a slight dip and came up against a wall, i.e. a steep hill. This was the turning point of my run – a positive turning point. Many felt justified to walk up this 200 metre stretch. But I know, from experience, that once I walk it’s the end of my performance and I will later keep slowing down to a walk for every little excuse. I decided to treat this like running up a flight of steps and above all not to be upset at the loss of speed. In any case, I was going past other ‘walkers’, meaning that I was actually gaining ground compared to walking pace.

Soon enough, the path came back to level and my breathing settled back to normal. It helped no little that at the moment I’m rather fit from my marathon training and that I had rested properly with no running at all during the previous two days. We rejoined the laggards from the 10 km race. Going past so many runners was a further boost for me and I kept up the momentum even after the latter went along their own way while we took a further detour on our 20k route.

From here on it was the usual route. It wasn’t flat but never too steep either, except for the bit at Groenendaal going up into the Tumulidreef at 16 to 17 km. I passed a fair number of rivals in the last few kilometres. Two of them overtook me again in the last half kilometre, but I didn’t react as I was running the fastest I could. My good work had already been done – throughout the run.

It's feels so good at the end of a race when I'm convinced that I couldn't have run any faster.

Some statistics: time 1:16:04. Finishing position 257th of  889 finishers. 42nd of 180 in my age group. 4:50 minutes per kilometre. 12.43 kph

Vlaams Brabant Loopcriterium, 2015

I wrote the other time that I've become a lazy writer. Almost a non-writer. Too much Facebook and too much Candy Crush. Too bad.

I used to write about every 'significant' run, which normally meant that every race would warrant a blog post. Well, not any more. Nowadays an entire season of races making up the yearly challenge of events in Vlaams Brabant (previously the Watermolen Cup, then Scott2Run, from this year Loopcriterium something) are wound up in a single blog post. It may also mean that the various individual races are becoming routine for me and no longer so 'significant'. Never mind.

The first run was quite significant, actually, and I even got round to writing a blog post but didn't manage to complete it. It was the first day of spring, still as cold as winter. We started at Tervuren and moved into the Arboretum forest, still very much in winter attire (both the forest and us runners). The other year I had to slow down to a walk after a hill too many in the second half. This year I was warned so I held back in the beginning to remain strong in the end. It worked, but I learned a great truth. I'm slowing down. There's nothing much I can do about it. We all age (unless we die young). A 70 year old runs slower than a 30 year old, and the slowdown is not sudden but gradual. Which is why my finishing times are becoming progressively longer. I was faster than last year but that comparison doesn't count because of the walking 'sessions'. Instead, I compared my time with a comeback run I had done 3 or 4 years ago, still nursing a hamstring injury, and then, hamstring and all, I was still quite faster than this year while fully fit. Never mind...

Two weeks (plus one day) later I had the Vienna marathon. I needed to get 7 runs in total to be able to classify at the end of the Loopcriterium, so a week after the marathon I had to go to Perk to chalk up another participation and a couple of hundred points. The intention was simply to take it easy and complete the loop. Obviously, I ended up racing and had quite a good performance too. The completely flat route worked to my advantage.

Another 2 weeks and I went to Porto for the Wings for Life run there. This was the 2nd or 3rd of May. Six days later I was in Hoeilaart for the Meifeest run, which I hadn't done for quite a few years. (Come to think of it, I realise that a good number of runs I couldn't run really fast due to being tired from preparatory long runs or from long distance events.) In Hoeilaart they have changed the day - from Friday to Saturday evening - as well as the old familiar course, which still goes into the Groenendaal wood but now takes in a much more challenging hill up to the rural area of the commune. I did well to keep running both times that we went up this hill. It was another good run, considering the hard work I had been doing the few weeks before - a full marathon and a 25 km Wings for Life.

Around 21st June, the official beginning of summer, we have the Machelen 9 point something kilometre race. This, too, they have changed. It's still in two loops but now they have included a rather long uphill street, which came as a bit of a surprise to me. Here, too, I maintained a reasonably good rhythm from start to finish, but the final time was nothing to write home about...

In the end of July, on a Friday evening, we had another double loop in Kortenberg. I was a bit wary of this one, as a few years ago I had a difficult race here and had to stop walking for a while in the forest. It turned out to be a good run for me, with a strong finish, although yet again I increased my final time.

Then came the summer visit to Malta, which made me miss the Duisburg 10 km and the Zaventem half marathon. Instead, I went straight into a race at the peak of the Mediterranean summer heat, a night race at Żebbuġ. I had to retire mid-way through this, fearing heat stroke. I hadn't been feeling well, either, and I think I did well to stop. I did recover well in the remaining 2 and a half weeks, putting in regular midweek training runs early in the morning running 15 loops around the block of buildings in Ta' Giorni where we were staying, and most importantly two hour runs for two Sundays running. Mid-August. That was excellent.

Back in cool and temperate Belgium... I needed two more races to complete my seven. Vossem I ran in much the same spirit as Machelen and Kortenberg. Meaning that I ran as fast as I thought I could reasonably expect, only to discover with dismay at the end that my performance worse than usual. I had laughed at a good friend of mine a number of years back, back in Malta, who in his fifties had complained that his times were a minute more each year. "What should he expect?" I had wondered, almost aloud. He's not getting any younger and the older you get the slower you become. Well, it's hard to accept that when it's you who are hit by this tough reality.

The last run to complete my set of seven was the dreaded Bertem, with its impossible hill in the forest, that I had conquered well, twice, the previous year. This time the hill never materialised. Bertem, too, had had its course changed. I realised this gradually during the first loop, and then, with a sense of relief we started the long, fast downhill run back to the start for the second loop. It should be ok, then, no more terrible hill to worry about. But I had forgotten that, instead of going up a very steep hill, we needed to go up by exactly the same elevation over a longer distance. For the first time in this year's edition of the Loopcriterium, in the second half of the last event, I slowed down to a walk! With consequent mediocre time.

Good thing that 3 weeks later I made up for this demoralising setback with a decent performance at the Brussels half marathon.

It was enough for me to obtain yet another placing in the top 20 of my category for this year. There were exactly 7 out of 13 races that were physically possible for me to achieve, and I managed to do them all.

A long, dark, cold, wintry preparation for the Paris marathon now beckons. My last marathon?

Alive and running - Brussels half marathon, October 2015

Hello, fan... I may have become lazy with my blogging, but I'm still running. Just completed the Brussels half marathon a week ago.

Throughout spring and summer I managed yet another placing in my age category in the Flemish Brabant challenge competition (more on that in another post). In the meantime I was building up the length of my long runs in preparation for the half marathon, which included two-hour runs, plus weekly runs to stay in shape, in Malta in the peak of summer in August.

It was a good build up. I had a setback in mid-September due to a strain in my back, which forced me to stop running for one week, but I had enough time to recover for the big day on Sunday 4th October.

It was a day of perfect weather, sunny with a mild temperature. We set off from the Parc Cinquantenaire, about 8000 runners, towards Rue de la Loi through the middle of the EU district where I work, on to the the Parc de Bruxelles in front of the king's palace. The first 10 km are not so easy, undulating with a net rise in level, but not really tough.

I had a bit of a shock at the 10 km checkpoint, which had a clock showing the time, a bit over 50 minutes. This was very slow indeed, little better than training pace, but I consoled myself that either: (a) it was positioned in the wrong place (quite a common occurrence in races organised in Belgium), or (b) it was actually the half way mark, i.e. 10.55 km. It dawned on me later that the position was correct and the time was the official time from the start, including the time it took me to get to the starting line.

Of course, the main reason for the poor time is really simple. I'm slowing down, but more on that later.

On a positive note, my race was a crescendo from start to finish. After the 10 km mark there's a downhill stretch towards Watermael. It was easy to pick up the pace here, of course, but when the road levelled out I kept a good rhythm through Auderghem towards the much feared hill up Avenue de Tervuren. Here the half marathon runners are joined by the marathon runners who are coming back from their 21 km loop into Tervuren, and you lose track of which runners around you are your direct rivals for the half, or whether they are incidental rivals doing the full marathon. In any case, your main concern here to go up the hill, which is longer than one kilometre.

There's an obelisk that marks the end of the hill, and from then on there remain about 6 km to the end of the race. I decided to increase the pace some more and started picking up people ahead with the aim of overtaking them. Many of them may have been taking part in the full marathon, but I didn't care and it didn't matter. It helped me keep a strong pace. I wasn't the only one doing this, of course, and in fact I was also being overtaken by a few others. For instance, in some cases I would pick someone to reach who was also doing my overtaking game and I would soon realise I couldn't reach him (it was mostly men at this stage of the race). So I would forget about him and look for someone else, while in the meantime overtaking others whom I had ignored.

It was quite interesting, actually, and apart from improving my time it helped for the last stretch to go by rather quickly. We raced downhill towards the old centre of Brussels, back on the detested cobble stones, into the spectacular Grand Place, which I hardly noticed, and zigzagging from one cobbled street to the next until the final turn and the open space known as De Brouckere. The finishing sprint is not one of my strongest points and in fact I was overtaken by several runners here, but it's not really important - a great winning sprint earns you three or four positions (to place in 1324th instead of 1329th place out of 8000) and you gain maybe 5 to 10 seconds, but it leaves you half dead. I was happy enough with my solid effort spread throughout the 21 km.

I finished in 1h41:55, in 1374th position out of 7874, at an average pace of 4:50 minutes per km overall. My 10 km split was 48:35, one and a half seconds per kilometre slower than the overall pace. 

I've resigned myself to the inevitable. I'm slowing down at roughly one minute per year but at 53 I'm still placing much higher than midpoint in the overall classification. This was my favourite type of performance - the first section at a moderate pace which helps preserve energy for a strong second half - well executed.

As I remarked on Facebook, a one minute slowdown per year would mean a half marathon in 1h59 at the age of 70. I should be quite happy with that.

For all my effort, I got this nice medal, sore leg muscles for two days, and a happy conviction that I can look forward to doing well in other future events.

A long way

In August last year I took part in a 5 km race in Birżebbuġa, Malta, the village where I was born. I was out of shape. Demotivated. Up to a couple of months earlier I had been harbouring the idea of building up to a marathon in October. All such plans were scrapped due to excessive heat and lack of motivation. Too many runs resulted in exhaustion and soaking wet shoes. I gave up. Most races I was doing I was succumbing to a strong urge to slow down to a walk.

There was some motivation, however. A demotivated runner doesn't take part in a race on a hot and humid August afternoon in Malta, at a temperature of 33 Celsius. But, still, I wasn't in great shape, and my target on the day was to run through the 5 km without slowing down to a walk. Just that. Loads of people, beginners, rather overweight chaps and so on actually beat me, but I was happy that I had finished the 5 km run - five kilometres! - without stopping.

It was that day that I decided that I wasn't a spent force yet, and that I would build up to a marathon.

Fast forward by 7 months, during which there were ups and several downs, but the ups prevailed so that today I was able to run for 3 hours, 17 minutes 53 seconds, for approximately 36 kilometres. I took the standard route for my long run, stepping out of the front door armed with energy drink sacs around my waist, vaseline in strategic areas, heavy gloves, contact lenses, but no hand warmers for a change. I headed towards Jezus Eik, then into the Arboretum forest, on to Duisburg in Tervuren, further along country lanes in wide open plains with fields all around, until my watch said 1 hour 37 minutes 30 seconds. At that point I made a 180 degree turn and ran exactly the same route back.

I have to say, I did get tired during the second part, but that's the whole point of running for a long distance. To be able to run a marathon you have to get used to running on tired legs. I tried to distract myself from the tiredness by switching off my mind. At some of the later stages it was a bit like running in a trance. However, I didn't have any particularly difficult moments, and even managed to pick up the pace in the last few minutes. So, overall, it was a very satisfactory longest pre-marathon run.

All I need to do now, in the last 3 weeks before Vienna, is avoid getting injured or catching a cold. I'll keep on training to remain used to the activity running, but without overdoing it. Now in fact the long runs will be much shorter. I should be taking part in a 16 km race in one weeks' time (part of the annual aggregate competition in our Flemish Brabant region) in the same Arboretum environs where I normally do my training. This will be followed by week's normal running, and a slowing down to almost no running in the final week before the big day.

Whatever happens, I've come a long way since that hot and humid August afternoon in Malta.

Vienna, here I come

This morning I did my Wednesday morning long run of 2h30m, for a distance of about 27 to 28 km, in a temperature of 0 to 2 Celsius. I started off from the garden next to the town hall of Hoeilaart, while it was still dark, towards Overijse and back for a total of 10 km (53 minutes), until it became light and I could venture into the forest at Groenendaal and on towards the Foret de Soignes, and then back to the car at Hoeilaart.

The run went exceedingly well, which is why, finally, I decided to place my entry into my next marathon. Paris is long since fully booked, which is a pity, so I'm going to Vienna instead. Let's see how it goes. Many things may still go wrong - injury and illness in particular - but I can't postpone any longer for fear that, after Paris, even this could be fully booked, which would leave me with boring Milan or having to postpone to a different date.

I could also get fed up of running very long distances, but now I've committed myself I have to, somehow, go up to the required distance. Snow and ice permitting... i.e. yet something else which could disrupt my build-up.

But let's not concentrate on what may go wrong. I'm happy right now, because things are going according to plan, my running form is good, and even the weather is cooperating.

Back to humble beginnings

Three days ago I ran for 3 km - 15 minutes - a run which I repeated the following day. One day of rest, and today I did 26 minutes for about 5 km.

How did I get down here? Well, it's a long story... (that's from "Down in the Sewer" by The Stranglers).

It was a long series of setbacks, starting with my motivation crisis last summer, followed by a three week period in the peak of summer in Malta, a slight recovery beginning of September after my return to Belgium, another stop for a one week vacation, then an injury in my calf, illness, a repeat injury on my comeback run... I haven't trained regularly since two months, and hadn't run at all for a whole month before last Thursday.

During this upheaval there were some interesting, I would call defining moments.

I would say the low point of my crisis was the Duisburg 10 km race on 8 August, which I started too fast, also considering my bad form due to lack of sufficient training, and which ended up being the third out of six races up till then in the Scott2Run series where I had to slow down to a walk. Admittedly, the route was difficult, the second half being mostly uphill on difficult terrain including cobbled paths, mud, narrow passages and so on. Even my choice of shoes was wrong on that day.

In Malta, for 3 weeks starting a few days later, I knew what to expect. I managed some runs that took an immense degree of will power to complete in the heat, but it was generally low key running with the inclusion of a good deal of swimming. For example, here...

That was simply wonderful!

I was taking it easy on purpose, with the intention of taking it up a notch or two in September. There was a 5 km race close to the end of August in Birżebbuġa. The temperature was around 33 C, the air humid, and two hours before the start I was still undecided whether to take part or not. I drove there, poured a lot of water on top of my head, drank another lot, and gave them my name. My intention was simply to complete the distance without slowing down to a walk. 5 kilometres! I did in fact run the whole way, which was actually a bit of an achievement in those conditions, but it was there and then that I decided that I was going to pick myself up and build up to a full marathon.

Easier said than done.

My recovery started very well, actually. Back in Belgium, beginning of September, I was dreading the final race for this year's edition of the Scott2Run series. This was a 10 km race in Bertem. Double the distance of Birżebbuġa and including a hill that's the steepest I know of all races I've ever done. In two times 5 km loops. Amazingly, it turned out to be one of best runs this year, probably second to the February half marathon in Malta. I registered the best speed, over 13 km/h, as well as my best finishing position for the whole series. It was a defining moment because I found out that, in spite of the doom and gloom, there was nothing basically wrong with me. My success here was due to three main factors, which I hope to keep in mind for the future:

1. I started slowly. (Now, really, after 23 years of running, do I still need to remind myself of this?)

2. I knew what to expect, so I was mentally prepared for the killer hill (times two).

3. I was determined to keep running and never slow down to a walk.

Following this success all seemed fine. I could resume regular training and build up my distances. I took a break of one week for a family commitment, but after the resumption a sharp pain in my right calf brought me to a sudden halt. Literally. Then a cold, then again the same injury...

Which is why my training runs this week were 3 kilometres and 5 kilometres. I hope my calf is now fine, and I have to be careful and ease back into my standard training schedule very gradually.

I was in Paris recently. In another defining moment, I knew that I had to run through the middle of the Champs Elysees, the Place de la Concorde and along the banks of the river Seine. I decided to aim to run the Paris marathon on 12 April 2015. Now, if my comeback goes according to plan, I might just be able to make it.

As the saying goes, mighty oaks from little acorns grow...

Steenokkerzeel 10k

Typical Flemish suburb located a short distance away from Brussels.

It was the last race that I needed to accomplish to gain a total of nine and a placing in the final classification of the 2013 Scott 2 Run challenge.

I almost missed it.

The race was on Saturday 5th October. The following day, on 6th October, there was the Brussels marathon, and this was the date that stuck in my mind, so I had the impression that the final race of the challenge, at Steenokkerzeel, would be on Sunday 6th October. My plan was that on Friday I would do a final easy 10km run, so that on Saturday I would rest to be in good shape for a race on Sunday.

Saturday morning I looked at the website for the competition, to confirm the starting time and so on. That's when I realised with a shock that the race was that very afternoon, and certainly not on Sunday! So I had to quickly change my plans for the day, prepare my running gear and drive to Steenokkerzeel for a 10km race.

Normally I take a day off running before a race, but this time I had done a standard training run of 10km the day before, so for this race I could only hope to do an easy run and simply gather the necessary points to achieve my placing in the final classification. It turned out the route was completely flat, no treacherous muddy paths in the forest, two loops along flat, well paved streets, and I managed to give a pretty good account of myself in spite of not being properly rested.

And (finally!) I obtained a well deserved classification in the top 25 of my age category. It really was well deserved, as I had to overcome many obstacles throughout this edition. In several cases I simply turned up without racing properly, just to put in a presence and get the necessary points and the minimum requirement of nine race participations. But if I hadn't bothered to check the website at the last possible moment on the morning of the last race, the good work I'd done in August following my back injury, scraping through a couple of races during that month would have been all in vain, as I would have missed the last, ninth, race due to a silly mix-up in the dates.

Placing 22nd in the overall final classification earned me a 45 euro gift voucher, which I can exchange for a Scott product at their warehouse in Kortenberg. This warehouse is open every first Saturday of the month, but the gift voucher expires at the end of February. Next Saturday is the last possible date when I can use it. The saga of my 2013 Scott 2 Run competition continues...

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.

Brussels marathon - 3h30:20

I have mixed feelings about this, my 11th marathon, that I ran today.

It's already a fine achievement, considering that the last three weeks have been disrupted by illness. As I waited to start, in fact, I would happily settle for simply completing the run, thereby adding another marathon to my collection. But the way it turned out I'm just a bit disappointed that I missed beating the 3h30 barrier by just 20 seconds, and more so considering what happened in the very final kilometre.

I started off well, as per plan, running at just under 5 minutes per kilometre, i.e. potentially sub-3h30. The cough that has been tormenting me for the past weeks was nowhere in evidence, and the only irritation was a large group of runners following the 3h30 pace-setter, who were often getting in the way in bottlenecks and especially at drinking stations. They would come marching past me, and then I would run past them. This happened several times throughout the marathon until eventually they took a commanding lead and left me alone. Tonight I'll probably dream of large yellow balloons...

The kilometre markers were erratic, but on average it was clear that I was gaining ground on my target time. Like in Malta last March I tried to avoid competing with other runners and concentrated on my own pace, but it was almost impossible to ignore the yellow balloons. As I approached the half way mark I started to lose ground on the 5min/km pace, but regained the pace up the hill towards Quatre Bras and then towards Tervuren Park. It really looked, then, that I was on my way to another memorable finishing time, similar to what I achieved in Malta (3h26).

Alas! Coming out of Tervuren, at around the 30km mark, I ran out of steam. Nothing too dramatic: I just couldn't run as fast as I had been running before. I looked forward to the long descent following the 32nd kilometre hoping to regain lost ground, which I didn't, and then I realised that I wouldn't be able to hold the initial pace until the finish.

So I decided to change tactics. At the foot of the downhill, at 35k, I decided to ignore the watch and just concentrated on reaching the end. This was at the beginning of a 2km long hill, at Woluwe park, where we were joined by the runners of the half marathon, and here I realised that I was running much faster than all these people who had run 21km less than me! This realisation gave me a strong morale boost, and I ran up this hill quite strongly, although I had now to take care to ward off a new peril - cramps - which I managed to (just) keep at bay by avoiding sudden movements and accelerations.

Beyond the Montgomery roundabout, into Cinquantenaire Park, with just 3km to go, I only had one thing in mind - to get to the finish, slightly disappointed at the loss of pace. The final stretch was Rue de la Loi, where I go to work everyday, and eventually descending into the centre of Brussels to finish at the Grand Place. 40km. 41km. With 1.2km to go I decided to look at the watch to get an estimate of my completion time. To my great surprise the watch said 3h24m and 5 seconds. I had a fighting chance of breaking 3h30 after all!

So here I threw all caution to the wind. The cramp had disappeared, I was still feeling strong, and I ran as fast as I could for the final 1.2km. A few hundred metres later there was an incident involving an ambulance, a man with a travelling case and several runners getting jammed up at a bottleneck, blocking my way and disrupting my mad rush to the finish. One lady runner became very angry indeed as I had to practically push her in the back while coming to an abrupt stop... In the end it didn't make a difference as it turned out that, yet again, the 41km marker had been placed too early and I was to miss the target by 20 seconds, a good deal more than the 2 seconds' delay caused by the blockage.

When you miss a target by a few seconds you tend to try to find where you could have done better. Could I have kept a better rhythm by looking at the watch at each of the final few kilometres? Maybe. Probably not. What I do know is that I achieved a first today - finishing a marathon at a sprint! It goes to show there's still a lot of power left in the good old legs... Ah yes, and another first - two marathons in the same calendar year.

The statistics are not bad looking at all:
400th place out of 1647 starters and 1569 finishers
65th male Over 45
Pace exactly 5 minutes per kilometre

And now, on to the 12th marathon!

P.S. After the finish, we had to limp on for a long, long walk (they said it's 800 metres, but it seemed much longer than that) to collect our bags from the Far Far Away Sports Hall. What a shame! It took me forever to get there. This, and the erratic kilometre markers marred an otherwise beautiful route. I'll probably look elsewhere for my future marathons.

Diary of an expatriate runner - 1 - Living in a bubble

Time does indeed fly. This year it will be five years since I left my native Malta to work in Belgium. One would suppose that by this time I would have got so used to living here that I could consider myself half Belgian.

How wrong would one be! There are so many factors working against this. There's the language, or in the Belgian case I should better say languages. To integrate properly in a newly adopted home country you must learn their language properly. Here you need to learn two languages, since half the population refuses to speak the other national language. So I generally stick to talking Maltese, since I'm nearly always in the company of Maltese people anyway, both at home and at work. Our job is translating EU documents into Maltese, which means that my colleagues are mostly Maltese. It almost feels as if I never left Malta, except that the view outside the office window shows Brussels instead of Valletta.

There's the internet, which makes it so easy to keep in touch. We read the Maltese newspapers on line. We watch Italian TV on satellite, and Maltese TV on dive.com. Through the internet we can interact with our friends all over the world including, mainly, in Malta. It's like we're living in a bubble - an extension of our home country planted in Belgian territory. So much for integration in our newly adopted home country...

Actually, some degree of integration is inevitable. It grows on you. You get used to the weather cycle, the public transport system, the road network, the housing, the people and their surprisingly relaxed way of life, traffic jams, beer that was made in heaven, lovely towns, parks and forests - and the Belgian running scene.

At first it seemed to me there wasn't any running scene at all. I arrived in Belgium in the beginning of winter, and winter in Belgium is mostly cold and dark. I managed to maintain a regular training schedule of sorts, but it was really tough. There were so many important things to sort out, and the discovery of the Belgian running set-up was certainly not among my top priorities. I did take part in the popular Brussels 20km race in May, with about 25,000 other participants, but that was about it. I had no other information whatsoever about running in Belgium.

Perhaps I should have joined a local running club. But I never got round to it, partly due to the language problem. I stayed in touch with the Maltese running scene, keeping fit through regular training, and on various occasions during my frequent visits to Malta I would take part in events that I knew so well - the Dingli 10, Birżebbuġa, the Pembroke 10k, the half marathon...

It was and still is like living two separate lives in parallel. When in Belgium, with its day-to-day realities and the work and general life routine, Malta seems so remote that it's like a dream. But every time we're in Malta the situation flips over and we immediately switch to Malta-mode as we meet our relatives and friends and go around all the familiar places we know so well. We feel as if we had never left, and now it's Belgium that seems a very remote existence.

Bit by bit, I came to realise that the running scene in Belgium is every bit as lively as it is in Malta. A marathon is held every year in Brussels, Antwerp, Bruges, Ghent, Vise (close to the Dutch border and in fact going to Maastricht in the Netherlands and back), in Ypres, on the coast close to Oostende, and others of which I may not even be aware. There are numerous road races, organised by the various local sports centres. Most regions have their own annual "challenge", consisting of a number of races within the region spread out throughout the year, quite similar to the St Patrick's AC race participation scheme, with points allocated by categories and according to the placing in each race.

Having now accomplished two marathons in Belgium (one in Brussels, the second in Antwerp), a handful of other occasional events, and after finally achieving my tenth marathon, quite appropriately in Malta last March, I'm now embarking on close to a full immersion in the Belgian running scene, through participation in what is known as the Watermolen Cup. This is the challenge, as mentioned in the previous paragraph, belonging to the region where I live, Vlaams Brabant. It will be an opportunity to discover other towns and villages in my region, and to pit the strength of my legs against that of the Belgians.

Which reminds me - there's another good reason why I didn't choose to join a Belgian running club. I'm already a proud member of St Patrick's Athletic Club, and that's the club whose glorious green and yellow colours I wear and represent in my Belgian running exploits.