My City

Just wanted to post a couple pics of my city in the summer to remind everyone (including myself) how beautiful the city is, even amongst all of the construction! 

And by the way, Belgium is greatly located, on the western side of its time zone, it does not get dark until well after 10 PM in the middle of May and the official sunset time is 1.5 hours later than Chicago.  Reminds me of growing up and being able to play golf until 10:15 in June.  I was walking home from dinner the other night and the city lights turned on at 10PM - its so great!  Enjoy!

PS - The picture at the bottom was taken at 9:32 PM, so you can see what I mean with how light it still is!

Day in Kortrijk

I started off the Holiday Monday with an 11K race in Kortrijk which I was completely unprepared for because I was unaware that it was going to be over 80 degrees F.  But it was a good last training before my 20K even though I finished a bit slower than I was hoping.  The rest of the day I hung out with my colleague's friends as they all grew up there so they showed me around the town as we went from one patio to the next enjoying the weather. We started in the city center for ice cream and it was amazing.

They even took me out to the countryside and we got a drink at a pub that they think I could have been the first American ever to visit!

Day at the Sea

We had another holiday weekend in Belgium -- Monday, May 24th is a holiday (50 days after Easter) and I was planning to take advantage of it.  Unfortunately, I was planning on having to work so I did not plan any trips but I still made the most of the long weekend in Belgium.

Saturday I made plans to golf with a friend / colleague as her family are members at a club up in Oostende right on the sea, and we were planning to go to the beach to enjoy the warm weather in the late afternoon.  It was one that I drove by when I went to the sea in December and was excited to get the opportunity to play.  But, unfortunately they had a tournament going on during the day so couldn't get on the course until after 3:30PM, so we decided to go to the beach first.  Unfortunately, it was about 4 degrees C cooler up by the sea than in Gent, so it was a bit too chilly to go to the beach so when I arrived I was told, "We are going to have some wine on the terrace first before we go out for lunch." So we headed out to the patio and sat in the sun and it felt so warm without any wind.  Her and her parents decided to make lunch there and stay because the place we were going to lunch was by the sea and would have been too chilly to sit on the patio.  So we started with these massive shrimp that were delicious and probably fresh bought that morning.  Then her dad brought out another bottle of wine and we just relaxed and enjoyed the sun and wine.  For lunch we had steak, salad, and of course fries.  They also made some pigeon that was delicious.  After lunch her dad brought out this bottle of red wine that was from this specific region along the southern coast of France and it was delicious.  I love how 'to the terrace for some wine' turned into 4.5 bottles of delicious French wine.

Then it was off to the golf course as the 3:30 in the afternoon quickly arrived.  I made the mistake of telling them I used to be a scratch golfer so all day that's all I heard - "you are a zero!?  Are you sure you want to play with us?  You never told me you were a zero!?"  I had to keep repeating I used to be, now I am a 5 or 6.  So, I had to make sure I played well otherwise they would think I was lying! 

The course was neat, pretty short but quite challenging with a strong wind ripping off the coast line the entire time.  Of course as soon as we tee off it starts to get cloudy and the wind picks up and blew a constant mist from the sea over us.  The mist was so thick it looked almost like fog and we could barely see the sea even though we could hear the waves crashing and were not that far away.  Here is a pic but I do not think it does justice.  The par 3, 8th hole is sort of there signature hole because you climb up to the tee box and it gives the best view of the sea.  The wind was ripping off the coast and I stuck a blistering 6 iron to 12 feet :-).  Just barely missed the putt though...

We played ten holes as that put us in the closest position to get back to the club house where we decided to go grab a drink.  Again... turned into a couple drinks, then dinner and I had an incredible fish dish and more delicious wine and even an Irish coffee (you would have loved it Dennis).  We sat down at a table and her parents made all 4 of us change seating positions to give me the seat with the view of the golf course with the sun setting over the sea.  Unfortunately, I do not have any pictures of it but it was beautiful!  Overall, such a great day, reminded me of the good ole days where I hung out at the golf club all day!!

Racing Proof

Each race has a company take photos of the race and you can easily search for the photos you are in by searching for your racing number which makes it way easier than looking at all of the pictures.  Some of these are not the most flattering but then again running isn't necessarily either!  Enjoy:

Go to this link: Racing Photos

For Oostende Race: click on "11.04.2010 Run Oostende (BE)" and type in '707' for the racing number.

For Antwerp Race: click on "25.04.2010 Antwerp Marathon 10 Miles (BE)" and type in "314" for the racing number.

For Gent Race: click on "13.05.2010 Stadsloop Gent (BE)" and type in "4074" for the racing number.

May 24th is another holiday and hopefully I will not have to work - if I don't I am running the 11K of Kortrijk.  I unfortunately missed the 15K of Bruges which would have been a great race seeing its in Bruges and also would have been a nice distance.

Ascension Day

Ascension Day is a holiday in Belgium and luckily I was able to celebrate it as I did not have to work for once! Wednesday night I took a nap when I got home from work and set my alarm at 1 AM to wake up to watch the Penguins game 7. Which in all aspects ended up being a bad idea - the Pens were dominated, it totally screwed up my whole jetlag schedule, and I did not get out of bed until 1:15 PM when I had to run a race at 3PM.  But in all reality, this is the best training I could do for my Ragnar Relay in June as there is very little amounts of sleeps before long runs!  I grabbed the last water out of my fridge, went to Subway to grab a 6 inch and walk over to the starting line to meet up some friends so we could sign up for the race.  I was wearing a Purdue hooded sweatshirt because it was 8 degrees C and sprinkling and a girl in line ended up being from Indianapolis and have been living in Gent for 2 years because her husband plays basketball for the Gent team - random, but she won the award for first person making a comment about Purdue. 

The race went very well and the course was a very nice run, which I run part of it quite often when I run in the evenings so it was nice to know the course for a change.  I wanted to break an hour mark and I knew I was going to be close and of course at the end there's a steep hill up to the finish line which I saved some energy up for and I passed at least 30 people climbing the hill but I think about half of them passed me at the top as I was spent!  But, the last part to the finish was slightly downhill and I sprinted past a few at the end and was hoping it was enough to break the hour mark, which it was as I finished with a time of 59:00:19 so I felt good about that. 

After the race we went to a pub to celebrate and we made reservations to Amadeus - the famous ribs place - for dinner which was delicious as always.  I love Ascension Day and we had Friday off of work too because Labor Day is May 1st in Belgium, and it fell on a Saturday this year so we also got the Friday off in place of the Labor Day holiday which was nice.

Trip 7

I flew back to be in the US for 1 working week and it was nice to be home.  Trip 7 unfortunately does not have any plans scheduled except for a couple races and working because could have some weekend work in store so I am not planning any trips, but the 20K of Brussels is at the end of May and I am working on preparing for that!

Antwerp Marathon Relay

Besides the pure lack of sleep and training for that matter, I was excited for the race to begin.  I was glad I was the second runner because I knew the longer the day went on the more tired I was going to become.  I had the 5KM to 15KM leg and it was a very nice run.  All completely flat and ran along the river just outside of the city center and I ran at the time where I could see the sun rising over the main cathedral which towers over the city which was quite nice.  I was just hoping to finish around an hour because I knew my body was going to hit a wall at some point and I wanted to enjoy the rest of the afternoon in Antwerp.  I felt like I was running so slow the entire time but actually did pretty well finishing in 60:00:57 minutes.  My friend told me I was running through the tunnel underneath the river and the last 1-2 kilometers would be a slow incline uphill run to the finish of my leg so I was saving for that as well but it ended up not being on my leg so when I was around the 14 KM mark I was wondering where the tunnel was and luckily the finish came before I found it :-). This was about 3 minutes faster than the race in Oostende even though I felt like I was running much slower here but I will take it.  The beer and the pizza was a great way to celebrate! 

Captions: Top - Finish line in the Grote Markt, famous Brabo makes it in the blog AGAIN
Bottom - Delicious lunch after the race

Belgian Wedding!

My boss was getting married in April and it happened to work out with my travel schedule that I was in town to attend.  I did not know what to expect, except for the fact I would not be able to understand much of what was going on if there were lots of speeches / people talking as it would all be in Dutch. 

I received a formal invitation but since I could not read much of it I just told my boss 1 person and asked the questions of when / where and I could figure it out from then.  I realized that here in Belgium they generally have 2 ceremonies: 1 "legal wedding" and 1 "formal wedding" in the church. The legal ceremony takes place at the court house / town hall of the city they are living in and is needed to ensure the marriage is legally binding, and this takes place before the formal wedding.  In this case, the courthouse wedding was done on Friday and the church wedding / receptions were on Saturday.  Yes, I said receptions.  On Saturday everyone was invited to the church for the ceremony at 2 PM, and at 4 PM they had a smaller reception where the "B list" guests are invited to: friends of parents, new colleagues, acquaintances, etc.  Then at 7PM is the "real" reception with dinner / dancing -- similar to the American wedding reception and of course I was invited to the real reception!

I arrived at the reception about 5 minutes before 7 PM and realized I did not bring a gift / card or anything, but I knew people just give money as gifts in Belgium, but of course I only had 35 euros on me.  So I left to find an ATM and of course, the first 3 ATMs I found, either were not working or did not take my type of ATM card.  I did not want to be any later so I figured I could claim my "American amnesty" and would try to borrow money from someone or tell my boss I would pay him later.  Luckily, I was able to borrow money so that ended up working out OK.  The amount you ask - around 25-30 euros if you are invited to the earlier reception and 50 euros if you are invited to the evening reception.

I arrived and I have never met my boss' now wife, and of course she is the first person in the greeting / receiving line.  I expect my boss to introduce me so I shake his hand first and of course get a hard time for skipping the bride... And I am supposed to give 3 kisses for congratulations which I totally messed up as well because I can never remember when to give 1, 2, or 3 kisses because it seems there are different rules all of the time!  Then, I get to the parents of the bride and groom and they are not expecting me to only speak English so that was a painful 30 seconds but I kept my eyes on the prize which was the butler holding a tray full of champagne at the end of the line and I just went straight for that after I gave my congrats. 

Around 8 PM they seated everyone and I was paired with some other colleagues from work so that was nice.  They announced who as sitting at each table which was neat because you could tell how the guests new the couple during this: table 1: parents, table 2: college friends, table 8: colleagues, etc.  The whole thing was in Dutch except for my table they did in English for me which was nice.  After my boss said "I apologize it wasn't all in English, but there are more people here that can't speak English than can't speak Dutch." 

The dinner / rest of the night was so typical European = relaxed.  We were served a 3 course meal + a dessert buffet with wine pairings throughout the whole meal which was not complete until after 11.  They did not really have a wedding cake, just a bunch of different ice creams and desserts which was fun to try a little bit of everything.  There was one part in between courses that everyone started waving their napkins and getting excited for something that I was unaware of but I joined anyway. 

The dance didn't even start until after 11:30 PM and did not end until 3 AM.  Normally not a big deal, but I still had an hour drive home to wake up at 7 to leave again for my race which was in the same town as the wedding.... but I did not want to get a hotel because they shut down all of the main entrances to the city for the race and I have no clue how to get in / around Antwerp except for the main roads and I was running with people from Gent who picked me up Sunday morning which worked well.