..
Pirate
Hej,

finally, the time has arrived: and the Het Nieuwsblad Run in Oostende (B) is upon us and Pirate Birthe and Ramon will participate…

Now, its Saturday afternoon and time arrived for our departure and 3h trip on the interstate to Belgium, when we arrived there finally, we enterend our small and nice reserved hotel and after that we went for a walk in the old town of oostende. It´s windy and chilly, the perfect running weather, but the run is tomorrow and not now. After a silent and cosy night, we stand up and made our way to the start and finish area which is 10min apart. It´s a bit odd for us, but at least this event, we knew it before, is almost perfectly organized. It´s part of the “tour” thru Belgium, which also included the 20miles run of Antwerpen and the marathon and half marathon of Brussel. After we visited the vstart and finish area, we went back to the hotel to relax a little bit. It´s sweltry and cloudy, if it´s stay like this it will be allright. At 12:00o´clock we went there again to get our starting papers. We had no problems with the different laguages and we tried our best not being discovered.
Pirate Oostende

Bit by bit our Belgian friends arrived, and one of them is also infected by the running and triathlon fever and told us about this event here, the „ Carrefour Running Tour“. Than, just on time with the start, the sun came out…holy shit…no more clouds, but doesn´t matter, my personal best time, I ran a few days earlier on thursday in Moers( my wife told me, with the upcoming sun, that she didn´t want to run a new personal best), and so I decided to run easy today. The starting signal came, and we almost missed it, because we talked so much, and start from all behind.
But that´s all a little bit to slow for me and so I tried to regains some place by doing the slalom technics. The sun is directly above us andalthough we´re on the ocean side, it´s windless and no sight of a shadow. The first 3km I ran really fast, but for my wife it´s not a good day, when she reached the first km point, her bootlace went open. I passed everybody who is possible, when I reached point 6km I thought about beating my personal best time of Thursday, but don´t count your chicken before they´re hatched, so I pass a little bit more, and luckily or maybe not, I don´t understand Flemish, because what some of they said, didn´t sound nice. On the last 2km, you ran on the promenade and at the end you could see the finish, so try a little bit harder, than I see a sign, “10km”, my Garmin told me the same, and the run is 10km long, but why the heck, is the finish still so far away??? I don´t get it, why I still had to run some more meters….
 
Pirate Oostende

230m  to be honest, and they hurt, than I cross the finish line with a time of 46:18min( just a small info, when I passed 10km I had 45:11min and this would be a new personal best. My wife arrives a few minutes later a nd she also stepped in the 10km trap, and she swearing as well about the 230m, which were long like eternity. When I talked later to our Belgian friends, they told us, there is nothing like “ official length” in Belgium, and so we laugh about the different king of cultures. Fantastic….

But after all, it was a good and nice run, I don´t have any pictures from the run, but every runner got a finish-movie: At the finish you received beverages, massages and an evening program.

We´re both looking forward for the 2nd of october 2011, when we´ll participate at the marathon of Brussel, maybe one or another wants to join us???


 
 
 

Your

Pirate Ramon and Birthe

<<< zurück
Pirate Felt