Racing in Europe Part 5: old PR demons

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Part Four here

One of the hardest parts about being in Europe for an extended period of time is being around people who don't want to be there. Nothing is much more of a buzz kill than excitedly landing in Europe at the start of your stint and listening to someone try to figure out how to best change their flight so that they can go home earlier. 

Fortunately for my third week, I was finally surrounded only by people who were enthusiastic to be there. It was also a busy week that I was excited about. 

It might not make complete sense to run an 800m just three days after a steeple, but it was necessary in order to fulfill one particular goal that I've been harboring all year. See, I have some old PRs. The oldest is my 400m PR of 58-point-something from a relay back in 1998. I might let that PR stay in the past millennium, or I might tackle it next year just for fun. Just one week after that 400m PR, I ran my fastest high school 800m, 2:11.79, in a race where I attempted to take down Shayne Culpepper (and failed). Two years later, in college, I chipped 0.19 off that time, and that's where my 800m PR stood - a 2:11.60 from spring break 2000. This became a bit of a joke - both that my PR was pretty weak and that it has lasted for more than a decade. So, I had resolved to find an 800m somewhere in Europe that would have me. 

I had emailed the race director for the Karlstad GP early on, and entered myself on the website at the same time (as best as I could tell - this meet didn't have an English version, nor did google translate do a very good job with it). The director got back to me saying that he couldn't let me in the A-heat, he was only accepting sub-2:00 types at that point. But since I had entered myself, I decided to wait and see how many people entered and if there was going to be a B=heat. And then I crossed the meet off my list after Ben Bruce informed me that Karlstad was a three hour drive from the Stockholm airport. 

And then I was pulled back in. Fellow steeplechaser Lennie Waite emailed me because she saw my name on the list and wanted to run a flat 3000m race there, but didn't want to do it alone. Suggestion was all I needed, and I was back on Kayak, searching for flights to Sweden. This was harder than it sounds. The only direct flight I could find out of Brussels was on Monday night and got in at 8:40pm. I emailed the meet director again about shuttles, fully aware that no accommodations should be made for B-heater, but was told that it was no problem. So, I booked the flight. 

On Sunday, I got an email from the guy in charge of shuttles, asking me to be at the airport by 5pm. This was obviously a strange request, given the enormous hassle and expense that the airline industry has made itself. But since the train to Karlstad involved an overnight stay along the way, or sleeping in Stockholm and taking a train straight to the meet the next morning, I decided to drop another $350 to change my flight to one that had a layover in Oslo and got in at just after 3pm. Or so I though. 

I woke up early the next morning to walk to the train and get to the airport with plenty of time to spare. After standing in a very slow Scandinavian Airlines line, I was told that I had not actually purchased my ticket. I was standing there with a confirmation email in my hand with my credit card information clearly accepted, and no actual ticket. I was sent to another line, where I was informed that there was no ticketing desk at the airport and that I'd have to call. Three international phone calls later, I was back on the late flight. At least I was saved from my impulse flight-change expense from the night before. 

The thought of returning to Leuven felt like admitting defeat, so I bought a ticket to Leuven (there was logic to this) but took a train to Brussels Centrum. I changed into running clothes in the bathroom and threw all my luggage in a locker and did my shakeout as a 20 minute running tour of Brussels, including drills and strides on a flat side street. I followed this up with yet another croque-monsieur, which is what I ate at about 75% of my meals out in Belgium, just because I knew what it was. These were generally alternated with salade met warme geitenkaas (warm goat cheese salad) and anything with spek (bacon). I also had no problem ordering steak.

I headed back to the airport for round number two on ticket number one. The ticket to Leuven had been an experiment. I noticed early on that the odds of them checking your ticket on the train is somewhere around 30%. A ticket to Leuven gave me the opportunity to play the stupid American that got on the wrong train act. I was never actually asked for my ticket. 

After my plane debacle, I had emailed the shuttle coordinator, who wrote back that he would see what they could do. I never heard back. On my flight, though, I ran into another athlete, who assured me that she had a shuttle. I decided I'd just follow her. When we arrived, sure enough there was a shuttle. We then had to wait at the airport for another hour and a half while security figured out how to get pole vault poles from the plane to the car. It's almost as if they had never seen poles, which is strange since there was a Diamond League meet there literally three days before. 

In the meantime, Lennie had arrived at the meet hotel to discover that she had a room provided by the meet. She checked with them to make sure I did as well, and they assured her I did. So, she cancelled our booked room at a hotel in town. 

I arrived at 1:30am to find that I didn't actually have a room. So the hotel added me to a room with a 3rd Murphy bed in a room already occupied by two sleeping Canadians. It was a small room with three women with too much luggage and no ventilation. I slept for about five hours before the rising sun became too hot for me to sleep another minute. 

Everything after this, though, was fantastic. My mood was instantly lifted by the clear blue skies and sunshine in Sweden. After two weeks of the overcast skies and rain of Belgium and Germany, I was starting to think that my often-somber mood was a reflection of my own well-being. Additionally, the hotel that I had somehow managed to crash had three free meals (provided by the meet), and free WiFi, which was great since I had refused to withdraw krona from the ATM at the airport and was pretty much out of data on both my iPhone and iPad.

I did a little morning workout of 4x150m in an attempt to introduce a little speed back into my legs, and spent some quality time trying to figure out how best to wear the gigatic front and back bib numbers. When the race rolled around, I did a faster and shorter warmup than I would normally do because of my morning mini-workout. I missed our call into the holding area, but caught the other women walking out to the track. Then they held us for 10 minutes on the track, which means I really had to pee. TMI?

I was the second slowest seed in the race, only ahead of the youngest competitor, who was 14 years younger than me. Please don't do the math on that. I started out in a pretty aggressive sprint, which put me pretty much in the back of the pack. As things started to settle and the pack started to split apart, I got a little antsy and decided to move up towards the front. I apparently came through the 400m in about 62, which is definitely the fastest 400m I have run in the last a decade. From there I attempted to run on the shoulder of the leader, thinking my longer-distance strength would prevail in the end. I was wrong. I still managed second place and with a mile-pace last 400m, crossed the line in what I hoped was a very high 2:10. Half an hour later, they finally had the results posted, and I had pulled off a 2:11.40. Eleven years and another 0.19 seconds chipped off my 800m PR. I now felt like my trip was well worth the money. 

My race was early, so I got to shower and change clothes before watching the rest of the meet and then enjoyed only my second night out during my time in Europe. The next morning, Lennie and I flew back to Brussels and met Shayla at a Portuguese restaurant in Leuven.

The following day was my last full day in Leuven, and the three of us made the most of it, completing a good run, drinking coffee, shopping, drinking more coffee and topping it all off with an indulgent meal of muscles and a waffle. And we video taped it. 

I also need to talk about Speculoos for a second here. When I think about eating in Belgium, I do not think about any of the traditional foods. Even waffles. What I think about is a couple soft-boiled eggs and toast smothered with speculoos. It is basically graham crackers in a peanut butter like texture form. Even though speculoos is making its way to the US in the form of severely overpriced imitations, I felt the need to purchase a few jars before my return. My big justification was that jars of speculoos in Leuven were 2.60€, which is about $3.70 (I have not found it for less than $7.50 in the US yet). But my real reason is that I wanted to bring home something geniunely from Belgium, and not one of those Starbucks mugs that you can buy in every airport in the world.

Pictures from my last meal and day of shopping in Leuven:

Shayla and Lennie were running another steeple on Saturday, but I had to get back to New York for the NYRR Team Championships. I flew in Friday afternoon for a Saturday morning race. It was a perfect bookend to my jet-lagged 1500m from the start of my trip. I expected to feel awful, but somehow managed to run a 5-mile PR of 27:50, finishing second to my teammate Caroline LeFrak, who completely destroyed me, running 27:00. That made three races in eight days, with two PRs and one near-miss. And, two more races in the week to come.

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