Racing in Europe Part 2: arriving is winning

posted by LHiggs, a Women Talk Sports blogger
Wednesday, August 3, 2011 at 8:44am EDT

About LHiggs:

Former competitive fast-pitch softball player and dancer turned steeplechaser with a best finish of 2nd in the NCAA mile and a finalist in the 2008 Olympic Trials 3000m steeplechase. Powered by the Ne...more

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Go back to Part One

I refer to myself as a fake professional runner. This is because maybe 1-2% of my income comes from running, but it takes up closer to 75% of my time and energy.

My real job is as a political consultant. My area of expertise is campaign election law, coupled with a little web design and social media. I started as a volunteer over 6 years ago, and through a series of fortunate and unfortunate events, I have made the job work for me.

The natural ebb and flow of the campaign cycle generally melds well with the competitive schedule. My busiest time periods are the first 2 weeks in January and the first 2 weeks of July. The USA track & field championships were right at the end of June, and so while my training partners and fellow competitors either spent time racing in Canada or whisked themselves off to Europe immediately, I returned to New York where I had a seemingly insurmountable amount of work waiting for me.

Besides an event for my main existing client, creating a lot of volume for me, I also decided to take on another client. This gave me a total of four clients going into the filing, two of which were full time jobs in themselves. Note: I'm not completely crazy, I did turn down a fifth.

Actually, I am a little crazy. I decided that in the middle of this two week frenzy of stress that I would give the steeple one additional shot. The USATF Club Championships was being held on July 8-9 at Icahn Stadium, theoretically just a couple miles from my apartment. I say theoretically because it is the absolute worst place to try to commute to in NYC. By public transport it involves either a subway and two buses (the last being the bus to the homeless shelter on Randall's Island, primarily occupied by the residents) or two buses plus a mile hike over the east river footbridge or the Triboro bridge. By cab it can take up to one very car sick hour depending on the route. So, I rented a Zipcar. And took the wrong route. It took me so long to drive across 125th street that I was in danger of missing the one-hour check-in deadline.

I wish I had missed it. The only reason I didn't was because of the two-hour lightening delay. By the time I raced, I was dangerously underfed, very far away from the appropriate caffeine time range (consumed completely in the car) and drained of more money on my Zipcar. It was still raining during the race and nothing clicked. I felt sluggish just 200m in, had some pretty awful water jumps, and crossed the line in 10:42. To cap it off, the competitor that finished behind me reassured me that I'm "still running very well for my age."

My coach told me to stop racing. So did my body. I returned to my desk chair and, on Monday, logged a solid 16-hours of work. However, the more time I spent working, the more I needed to leave. I still had very romantic expectations of what it would be like to be racing in Europe. I also had a non-refundable $1200 plane ticket that I purchased while sunbathing poolside in the Hamptons over the 4th of July weekend. My filing deadline was Friday at 5:00pm and my flight was leaving at 7:25pm. I was off.

I had a plan in my head that made complete sense to me, but very little to anyone else. This came mostly from my extreme cluelessness about what I was doing. When I started to plan the trip, I had only Google as my guide. I called one agent that a friend of mine prodded me to call, and never heard back. I also emailed an agent that works with some of the other steeplechasers, and never heard back. I emailed a couple other runners and got very vague, unhelpful responses. The one athlete that gave me the most information was Maggie Infeld, a fellow NYAC athlete who spent her first summer racing in Europe last year. Unfortunately, I couldn't get into most of the meets she suggested, but she gave me a lot of confidence that I would be just fine.

Finally, my friend and teammate (and the person whose pool I was sunbathing at) Caroline LeFrak, offered to contact one of the meet director's on my behalf. She is an agent herself, and probably the first person I should have asked, but I was being a little stubborn thinking I could get myself into meets with the power of a Google search and online entries. Maybe I could have, but with her help I was easily into a steeplechase on July 30th, complete with two free nights in a hotel room.

It was all uphill from there. Word of mouth started to work out for me. After I found out that a couple friends of mine were racing in Huesden, Belgium, I did a little search of results from past years and discovered that they had some pre-program races. I found that if I booked the slightly more expensive direct flight from New York to Brussels, I could land early enough to race a relatively low-key 1500m. All I had to do was find a way to sleep through the night on my eight hour flight.

Thanks to my lack of real employment and my low-budget health insurance, I really had no way of scoring the good stuff. Everyone kept saying that Ambien was my golden ticket, but it just wasn't going to happen. So, over the counter it was. Thirty minutes before my flight, I followed my plan. I fell asleep before we took off and was out cold until the adorable squealing baby started off on her soothing melody. So, there went my 8 hours. Instead I had 7 more hours of on and off, drug-hazed dozing.

However, none of this really mattered to me once I landed. It was morning in Brussels, and denial is a powerful thing. I was completely convinced that I was immediately adjusted. I picked up a coffee and a waffle (how original) and also a memory chip for the new camera that I had to buy at the JFK Airport since I failed to pack my perfectly awesome camera that's resting in my desk drawer right now, fully charged and very sad about being left behind.

The next step, also a result of my blindness to the landscape, involved picking up a rental car. No one does this. The whole point of staying in Leuven is that the train system around Belgium is ridiculously easy. And sometimes free (more on this later). However, after seeing that getting to Huesden required two train transfers, I was afraid that I'd miss my race. I'm not sure why I thought that five hours was not enough time for me to commute 45 minutes by train, but I felt much more self-sufficient in a car. Also, I had done some negotiating with Lisa Aguilara before I took off, which concluded in four free nights in a dorm in Germany in exchange for driving her there.

However, now it's 9:00am and I have seven hours to kill and no hotel room to check into. Did I fail to mention that? Lisa also convinced me not to book a hotel room near Huesden, but to drive to Leuven after the race and hope that during those several hours between landing and racing, someone would offer me a place to rest my head. Sounds like a healthy gamble, right?

I start driving towards Huesden, fully planning on doing a shakeout and then taking a nap in my car, when I see the exit for Leuven. My need to be in the place that has been tormenting me for the last two weeks takes a complete grip on the steering wheel and sends me off in that direction. Of course, I know nothing about Leuven. I drive around in circles and find a parking spot near what I assume must be the city center. I changed into running clothes in the back seat, stared at a parking payment machine until I knew what it said, and then headed off on my 20 minute shakeout/figure out Leuven jog.

From here on out things start to fall into place. I find Lisa at a coffee shop that I will get to know a little too well in the coming weeks: Koffie Onan. While I'm sitting there enjoying my second cappuccino of the trip, as well as a scone that fell out of heaven and landed on my plate, my future savior, Kim Smith, ran by. She first told me to go take a nap in her hotel room. She then told me that I could sleep in the abandoned second bed in her hotel room that night. I was already saved.

On to Huesden! After my nap, I grabbed a sandwich and resumed my drive. I found the track very easy, checked in without a hitch and was happy to not have to pay an entry fee. I knew no one in my race except for my sometimes training partner Delilah DiCrescenzo. The meet was very professional, with early check-in, a holding room, baskets for our gear. I started to feel a little in over my head. However, there's nothing I enjoy more in racing than when I'm in over my head.

One thing I failed to consider prior to racing abroad was that the pre-race announcements go something like this: "blah blah blah, blah blah blah, blah blah blah." The only words I actually understood while doing strides on the track were "Delilah" and "Plain White-Ts." And then I felt right at home.

My race was mostly filled with tall, beautiful blondes. To any men reading this, I'm sorry you could not be there. The rabbit's name was also Lesley (spelled correctly). She took it out at what I thought for sure was a 27 second first 200m. I came through in last in the most painful 35 that I've ever run. And thus began my stint of racing in Europe.

The race was not completely awful. It was technically closer to my high school PR than my adulthood PR, but I passed about half of the field in the second half. My finishing time was 4:30, which was actually better than my worst mile indoors and probably comparably better than my 10:42 steeple the weekend prior. It certainly is not a time that would normally justify racing in Europe, but I made sure to tell everyone that I could that I had literally just gotten off a plane.

Following my race, I decided to add to my discomfort by doing a three mile pace run. I started at 6:30 pace and finished around 5:45. During this time, I was harassed by a creepy van driver, honked at and almost deliberately hit. This was my introduction to the world of running outside NYC. Apparently running on roads is not something people do over here. Apparently it's also acceptable to try to kill runners with large moving vehicles. But I didn't care, I was so ridiculously happy to be where I was.

The rest of the meet was cold and rainy, but I managed to score some free food and indulged in an extra cup of coffee. I caught up with some people that I hadn't spoken to in ages (like three whole weeks). There are so many Americans at these meets that it does not feel much different than being at home. I commissioned a couple passengers to keep me awake on my drive back to Leuven (Huesden steeplechase champ Ben Bruce and his girlfriend Stephanie Rothstein, who was my NYAC teammate a couple years ago). We did a fabulous job, in my opinion, of negotiating the downpour on a highway with no lights, and finding our way to their lodging based solely on visual cues, such as a bowling alley I had seen earlier in the day.

I crawled into the spare bed in Kim's hotel room and slipped into the best coma of my life. And that concluded my first very happy day of racing in Europe.

To be continued....

Go To Part 3

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Riding the European Track & Field Circuit

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Racing in Europe Part 2: arriving is winning

Riding the European Track & Field Circuit

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