It’s Sunday, 28th of May 2023, and today is the day of my most intense race of the first half of 2023. The Brussels 20K is a very popular and well-known race in Belgium and cycles through the capital of Brussels. Not only is it popular in both Flanders and Wallonia (which isn’t the case for most other events), there’s also a lot of people from all over Europe that come in and run this event. This year was particularly special as the weather turned out to be amazing, and more than 40 000 people joined together on the start line.
I started the day and woke up pretty early at around 6h30 to catch the train to Brussels that leaves at 8h. On a usual day, I leave from my hometown Sint-Niklaas, but there are no direct trains heading to Brussels on weekend days forcing me to either switch at the next stop (Lokeren) or either go there directly by bike. Because of the infamous Belgian railways, I opted for the second option and soon found out that this was already the better choice. The train from Sint-Niklaas to Lokeren was cancelled and I would have never made it on time to Brussels otherwise. First win of the day, yeey! 😊
From Lokeren onwards, I was joined by one of my best friends who hiked the same route through Brussels together with her mom and sister. About an hour later, around 9am, we arrived in Brussels and headed down to the subway where we were soon greeted by the immense crowd of people that are all trying to make it to the start in time. Luckily for us, the subway company came prepared and made sure that there was a large amount of trains leaving with only one minute in-between to pick up all these people.
Around 9.30am, we made it to the starting location in the Parc du Cinquantenaire (Jubelpark in Dutch) which is completely surrounded by buildings of the European Quarter and the EU. I’ve been a long time supporter of the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) and this race was a little bit special since I was running as a member of Team Panda! I was given a shirt that demonstrated the WWF’s logo and that clearly showed who belongs to the amazing #TeamPanda. Resembling a bit the Brandenburger Tor in Berlin, the race was set to finish through the memorial arch, which you can see on the first picture below.
After meeting up with the WWF stand and getting the meet the much anticipated panda in real life, I headed over to the starting area where I got assigned a specific box to start in. I was scheduled to start at 10h06, and gave myself 15 minutes to get there from the WWF stand which was located about 300m away. This is where I noticed that it was going to be very very crowded during the race. After already queuing for 10 minutes, I was still standing in the same spot and was nervously waiting with tens of thousands of other people to crawl through the narrow gate in the fence that lead us to the starting area. A few minutes later, the atmosphere shifted and some people started breaking down and crawling over the fence leading to the starting area whilst the police tried to stop them from the other side.
Eventually, in order to avoid more issues, the organisation of the race opened up more sections of the fence and I made it just in time. All participants were assigned one out of 5 waves, based upon your goal time, that each started with 6 minutes apart. This proved to be the second major underestimation of the organisation which clearly didn’t expect this many people to turn up (even tough they knew exactly how many participants registered).
I started out not too fast at around 5 min/km since there was not enough space to actually pass people and run faster. After 4 or 5 kilometers, I started to speed up a little bit and slowly saw the Sonian Forest glooming up in the distance. The first sunshine of the year was slowly burning on my head and I was looking forward to some proper shade. Slowly slugging along the course, I arrived at the second aid station directly at the start of the Bois de la Cambre and almost bumped into the queue of people in front of me, all waiting to get some water. It seems like a good idea to spread the different waves of runners over a longer timespan to avoid these issues in the future. Events such as the Antwerp 10 miles are also hosting around 40 000 participants, but don’t have this issue since the different waves start with a 20 or 25 minute gap between them.
I start to feel the first signs of fatigue after running 7 or 8 km at maximum pace and I’m really glad to see a promo-stand of Aquarius popping up where I can grab a free sports drink. We slowly leave the shade of the Sonian Forest and start the climb again towards the city center of Brussels. This is where it gets really hot, and I start to struggle more and more. My pace goes down and starts to flirt with 5 min/km which is considerably slower than the 4:30 min/km I started out with.
The last 3 kilometers are straight and I start to see the finish line in the distance. Sweat is dripping down my head, my heart rate is more than 200 beats per minute and I think I can safely conclude that this is one of the harder races I ever did (so far). The fact that the weeks before this race where really stressy with me finalising my PhD and preparing for my public defence the week after contributed to my fatigue. All-in-all, the race was very busy, and the organisation was clearly not prepared for this, but I did have fun and I do consider participating again in the future.
