Running round in circles (Running)

Wednesday 03 December 2008 12:42PM

I’ve been living in Brussels for the past few weeks, and am here until Christmas, looking after my girlfriend who’s just had an operation on her feet, and doing some work on my Msc. I’d known I would be doing this for some time so had come up with a plan of things to do while here to kick start a training programme for this winter’s ski mountaineering races and a summer of big mountain races in Europe. Top of the list was doing a load of cross country races in Belgium. That didn’t sound too difficult to arrange, Belgium is famous for its cross country runners, and right at the beginning of my time here I found a list that indicated there was a race every weekend, perfect. Things inevitably end up being more complicated. If I was doing this back in the UK it would go something like this: turn up at a club, they give you a vest and you take the place of someone else in the club who has entered but decided not to run, you run round a muddy park for half an hour, finish close enough to the middle of the pack so as not to arouse suspicion before heading home for a long soak in the bath and Sunday afternoon TV. This is deemed acceptable for a while after which you’d be expected to join the club.

So I spent a while looking online for Brussels clubs, asked in a few running shops, and fired off a load of emails, all being pretty direct that I wanted to do some cross country races, all leading nowhere. Then I went along to a few training sessions with a local club, which all went fine but nobody seemed to be into doing much racing or to know anything about the series of cross country races I’d found online. Finally last night I went to a track training session. Things were very different to the other sessions I had been to; first of all there were many more people, so I had to find the right group to train with. I was passed from one coach to another, each demanding to know what level of runner I was. This question caught me off guard, back home runners always downplay how good they are, and over-exaggerate how injured and how little training they’ve been doing. Telling someone exactly how fast you can run within the first minute of meeting them seemed culturally on a par with asking a woman you’ve just met how much she weighs. At first I gave vague and evasive answers, at once wanting not to appear boastful but not wanting to get put in the beginners group. To make matters worse, I didn’t really know, in number terms, how to describe what level of runner I was, because almost all the racing I do is in the mountains so the times mean virtually nothing compared to road or track running. Finally I made an estimate of my likely 10k time (I’ve never run a 10k) based on the times I knew for people I compete with in fell races. This was met with a mixture of mirth and shock, so perhaps I’d been a bit overgenerous in my estimations. Still, it seemed to put me in a group with some runners of roughly the same speed as me. The session went well, and at the end I again asked the coach about doing some cross country races. After narrowly avoiding paying 45 euros to join (not great value for money if I’m only going to be here for bits and pieces of the year) I was finally passed to yet another coach wanting to know what level of runner I was. Eventually we agreed that I’d come again on Thursday and run a test with him watching, then we could talk about me running some cross country races. We’ll see. If this falls through there are at least some more mainstream trail and road races the following two weekends to get my teeth stuck into. You always expect dealing with bureaucracy in a foreign language and culture to be difficult, but it’s always surprising when it’s something that you think is going to be so simple.