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Antwerp Marathon
Four weeks ago, I ran the Berlin marathon with the stretch goal of finishing a marathon in under three hours. I improved my PR by over four minutes there, but finished well out of reach of the sub-three goal I had in mind. While I was happy with the result, I could not shake the feeling that I could have done better: issues with high blood sugars made my legs tense up early in the race, which made me blow up in the second half of the race. Two days later, when I could walk with only a mild amount of pain, I got the idea of running the Antwerp marathon four weeks later. While the idea seemed crazy, it made some degree of sense: I could get another race out of the hours I spent training this summer, and I could get some additional marathon experience without too much stress: I already finished my goal marathon this autumn, so anything I may or may not accomplish in this race would just be a bonus. While I officially took some time to decide, my mind was made up the moment the idea entered my head. On the 22nd of October, 4 weeks after running Berlin, I lined up in Antwerp to race my fifth marathon.
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Berlin Marathon
After 12 weeks of training, I ran the Brussels marathon on the 2nd of October 2022. After blowing up and missing my goal in that race, I was eager to give it another shot and started a marathon binge driven mostly by hype. I eagerly decided to join the Ghent marathon and signed up for the prestigious Berlin marathon on a whim. Since spots for this event are both limited and highly sought after, I figured I would never get past the lottery anyway. As you are reading this, you can probably guess what happened next: last December, I received a mail stating that I would be one of the starters of the Berlin marathon on the 24th of September. Thus, on that faithful day, I lined up to run my fourth marathon, third marathon in less than a year’s time and my first marathon major.
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Gent Marathon
After improving my Marathon PR by more than 20 minutes, but missing my goal by more than 5 at the Brussels Marathon back in October, I was beyond hyped to give the Marathon distance another attempt. I was not content to wait another year for the Brussels marathon. Instead, I entered the lottery for the Berlin marathon and decided to train for the Ghent marathon, which would take place at the 26th of March. This was far enough to give me adequate time to prepare, while being close enough to sate my appetite. I eventually ended up grabbing a spot for Berlin (which takes place in September), so this marathon would serve two purposes. First, I would be able to give sub 3:15 another shot in a less hilly city. Second, it would serve as an excellent benchmark of my training progress before Berlin.
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Brussels Marathon
After a rather successful 20km of Brussels, I got extremely motivated to run more and foolishly decided to start training for another marathon. I previously ran a marathon in 2017. While successful, the final month of training got me burnt out on running for some time, which is why I held off on training for such a demanding distance again. Nevertheless, I was sufficiently motivated to give marathon training and racing another try. I was also curious to see how the faster times I had been running would translate to the marathon distance.
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20km van Brussel
It’s become somewhat of a yearly tradition for me to race the 20 km of Brussels. While such a hilly race is not a great setting to break personal distance records, it is nice to run the same race every year as some sort of benchmark. Besides that, I really like the race and it happens to start and finish within walking distance from my front door. As such, last Sunday I summoned my loyal supporters (i.e. my mum, dad and girlfriend), laced up my running shoes, headed towards the jubelpark and got myself ready to race the famed 20K of Brussels for the 6th time.
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Stratenloop Welle
Inspired by the arrival of some fancy new running toys, I decided to take my training for the upcoming 20 km of Brussels a bit more seriously. While 9 weeks of training can only do so much for my finish time, I did finally decide to tackle this properly and asked a colleague for help and he was nice enough to come up with training schedule for me. Since I have not raced since 2019, and since I have been (unsuccessfully) trying to take it easy during my training runs, I had no idea what my current speed race speed would be. Therefore, I figured finding a small, local, race and using it as a benchmark would be a pretty good idea. I could also use this opportunity to write down a new 10K PB, since my last PB was set in hilly Brussels and dates from 2017.
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Brussels Marathon
After successfully finishing the 20 km of Brussels and the Brussels half-marathon in 2016, I decided that I should try to run a marathon before the end of 2017. Since I ran all my races in Brussels so far, it seemed only fitting that the Brussels marathon would be the event of choice.
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20 km of Brussels
A few days ago, I ran the 20 km of Brussels for the second time in my life. After finishing with a time of 1:51:54 last year, I was keen to see how much better I could do after another year of running.
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