Jogging de la ligne (May 27, 2018)

Halfway through our vacation in Belgium, Brian and I saw a flier for a local race happening the next day. We decided to do it. We needed to run anyway.

Registration the next morning was in a school gym. The registration form was in French, but luckily it was pretty short so we didn’t have too much trouble. There was a 6.5K option and an 11.8K option. We signed up for the 11.8K (which only cost 5 euro each.) Less than $12 for both of us to run a 7+ miler! Not bad at all.

I was in awe of all of the fun-looking ladders and climbing things in the gym. I really wanted to take a gym class at that school.

There may have been more men wearing Lycra, but other than that the runners looked much like they do at any other race.

The race director talked for quite a while at the start. We had no idea what he was saying. At one point, everyone laughed.

The race was mostly on an old railway line which was now a wide, flat dirt path. There was also a decent amount of single track through the woods and a very short bit at the beginning and end on a paved bike path.

There were a couple of water stops. One of them also had Belgian waffles.

We took our time and stopped for a bunch of pictures, but by the end I was struggling to keep up. Really struggling. Brian later told me he’d never heard me breathing that hard before. Vacations wear me out. Plus it was humid.

I don’t think more than a handful of people finished after us.

Beer and all kinds of food were available for purchase afterward. The beer seemed popular with the faster crowd.

I wished I felt like drinking beer, but my stomach was feeling a little too queasy.

The strangest thing to me about the whole thing was that there was only one bathroom for men and one for women (I’m talking one stall) and there was never a line. Do people in Belgium not drink coffee in the morning?  I’ve never not had to wait in line for the bathroom before a race. It was very nice, but very strange.