11K Rijkevorsel: PR's all around...and around...and around!

Jenny, Mark and I headed out yesterday afternoon for Rijkevorsel, a village northwest of Antwerp, very close to the Dutch border, for our 11K which was to start at 6 pm. When we were looking at the map of the course (a 5K loop, followed by two 3K loops), Mark wanted to know why Belgians always seem to run in loops. Well, it's a small country, and if we don't run in loops we might end up in the Netherlands, or Germany, or France...

There were a total of 1089 people signed up for the various races: marathon, estafette marathon, 11K, 5K, kids runs. So the field for our race was not big at all. Especially after the 5K people finished after the first loop, it was lonely going (except when the fast runners started lapping me!). The course went through the village, through the main street and some residential streets, and it was perfectly flat. The weather was perfect, 18°C, no rain, no wind, partly cloudy. What a contrast to the Ladies Run 11K two months ago which was hot and hilly!

Jenny and Mark, encouraging as ever, kept telling me I should be able to get a PR on this - and I kept teasing them they would probably get one, too (they have never run the weird distance 11K in a race before, so whatever they ran, it would be a PR for them). But I am never that ambitious starting out on a race - my main objective is to finish and not make a fool of myself.

I came around the first loop after 5K and the clock said about 30 minutes, which I thought wasn't too bad. My sports watch had died on me, so I only had a regular watch and couldn't really track my time per kilometer very accurately, so I just tried to go by how I felt and run a nice steady pace and not worry about it too much. Mark lapped me just after the 6 km marker, and shouted out some encouraging words as he sped by. I kept going and passed the finish the second time at about 49 minutes. As I went around the church to start my last lap, a man who had finished told me to just keep going at a steady pace. A guy on a bike started following me and was telling the volunteers along the road as I passed them, "this was the last one", which was making me mad. I wanted to turn around and say, "Hello! I can hear you! Quit saying that!" But it turned out he wasn't saying I was the last one, it was the last group of runners he was indicating, because there were still people behind me. But I didn't really figure that out til I finished so it was still kind of a bummer. At that point I was wishing I had just signed up for the 5K, but I had to finish, and if you think you're going to be coming in last, you have to go for it and try to finish strong.

As I came up towards the finish, I heard Jenny's voice, she was shouting at me to sprint, sprint, Amy, sprint, and then I saw the clock and it still said 1:08:something, so I started to sprint as fast as I could, and as I came in it had just hit 1:09, I was so amazed, I had not expected to have been running that well. Jenny and Mark found me and they were saying I got a PR, I couldn't believe it at first, and then I turned and saw someone coming in behind me, so then I realized I wasn't last after all.

Mark told me he came in at 46 minutes, Jenny at 59, so (of course) they both PRed and were really pleased with their times. As we were standing there, I saw a photographer, so I went up to him and said that Jenny and Mark had come all the way from Florida to run this race, so he went and got the race director, who came over and talked to them for a few minutes, asked them their times, and took down their names, and said to please stick around for the awards ceremony at 8. So that is what we did and after all the awards were announced, he called Mark and "Jean" up to the stage, and said they were pleased to have participants all the way from Florida and gave them both a big bottle of Westmalle Trappist beer!!! How cool is that! They took a lot of photos, so there will probably be some pictures of them on the race website.

We had a great time, it was a fun race, and we drove home, all very pleased with ourselves and our PR's!