Ook harde wind in Egmond

Plaatsingsdatum: Jan 09, 2011 8:5:20 PM

Mijn excuses voor het feit dat de tekst in het Engels is, maar ik heb deze geschreven voor mijn Blog dat ook nog door Amerikaanse vrienden gelezen wordt.

The "Halve van Egmond" is a half marathon with a tough reputation, because it is run under wintery circumstances on the beach and around the dunes near Egmond aan Zee in North Holland. Last year it was cancelled because of snow and ice, but this year the circumstances were fairly ideal: 5 degrees and sun, which is a treat give the cold, snowy and rainy weather of the last month. The only challenging aspect of the race was a hard Southwestern wind, which meant that the 7 km beach stretch would be all against the wind. Clearly this is not a race to set new records, so I didn't go there with anything like that in mind.

Even though we set out early, Steffi and I arrived relatively late in Egmond, still quite in time to make it to the start, but with the consequence that I was rather in the middle of the first starting group than more up front. This turned out to be quite more of a problem than I anticipated: even though this group was for "wedstrijdlopers", many of them turned out to be quite slow. Very slow. So after the gun went off and I crossed the start line a minute later the going was very slow. Now this is not exceptional in large race, but here it was worse than ever before. The first three kilometers were a loop through the village of Egmond, and the first kilometer too me over 5 minutes! The second and third kilometer were somewhat faster, but still frustrating. Fortunately we now made the transition to the beach where there was much more space. The first 100 meters were quite challenging because the sand was deep, but also tricky. But closer to the water the sand firmed up, make it possible to run again. Overall the sand was not too bad, but not as nice as on Terschelling where I trained between Christmas and New Year. But the wind was tough, and because I was so far in the back I could not profit from drafting off others: people ran in wedge-shaped groups, so each time I overtook one I had a brief moment of respite before I had to face the wind again. But apart from the challenging running the scenery was absolutely fabulous: the long string of runners of the beach, the sun, people cheering us on! But after several kilometers I started looking forward to running in the shelter of the dunes... After seven kilometers of battering the wind on the beach, a final challenge: getting of the beach, first through heavy sand and the a steep incline.

But the shelter of the dunes, the wind in our backs, and the solid ground gave our feet wings! It felt so much better running back, even though the roads were tricky and hilly.

Just after exiting the beach I met up with Emile from the basisgroep (Steffi runs with that group), so we had a brief chat. But even though this was only the halfway point the remainder seemed much easier, and I managed to pick up a bit of speed compared to the earlier sections. The advantage of starting later is that I was in continuous overtaking mode, which is, after all, inspiring, even though it is even better to run in a group of runners with a similar speed.

Now that the end was approaching, there was one final challenge: the so-called "Bloedweg" (blood way) with a final hill. Again it turned out that hills in the Netherlands are not particularly challenging, even though the wind put in an effort to make it look like one. A final few turns in Egmond, and there was the finish!

My final time was 1:31:03, with which I was quite pleased given the circumstances, and the fact that I probably lost more than a minute running pedestrian pace in the first three km's. But also noteworthy is the beauty of this race: it would almost be better to run it at an easy pace and enjoy it even more!