2009 Brussels 20km

It's time to start seriously preparing for this year's Brussels 20km run. It is on 31 May, which means there are only three more weeks to train. So far I think I'm OK - I'm running 15 km every Sunday without any problem - no blisters, no pulled muscles, no heart attack! Hopefully the stretch to 20 km will not be too hard - I'm hoping that the extra adrenalin that such an evnt produces will carry me to the finishing line. Unfortunately the last 5 km, that I have not yet added to my training schedule, include the notorious Avenue de Tervuren/Tervurenlaan, a long hill that comes just at the point when the very last thing you want is a hill.

Culling my MP3

I usually run for an hour every Sunday morning in the Bois de la Cambre/Terkamerenbos in the south of Brussels. While running, I listen to my MP3 player. When you're running there is, of course, very little else you can do, so you tend to concentrate more on the music.

So during this hour or so I get the opportunity to really re-listen to my supposed musical tastes. Out of a large number of CDs I have had to select only 194 tracks to put on my MP3 (it is not, of course, an iPod); these 194 tracks should, therefore, represent those I like most; and to a great extent they do. But inevitably, the constant repetition of the same tracks over and over (I also listen to my MP3 on the way too and from work), makes clear that I don't, in fact, really like some of them. Some tracks I look forward to, and other I skip when they start playing. This has been a small revelation to me, as I had thought I liked them all.

So which are the winners and losers?

The tracks I skip past tend to be from Brian Ferry, Prodigy, and one or two from New Order. The current 'winners', that I look forward to, are also from the same era, and include Blondie, the Ramones, REM, and odd tracks by Black Sabbath (Paranoid, of course), The Buzzcocks, Tracy Chapman, and Steve Harley and the Cockney Rebels. Newer stuff includes NWA, Motorhead, The White Stripes, and the Cranberries. Some tracks by New Order and Prodigy remain among those I look forward to.

It's time for a cull. My MP3 is full to capacity, so I have to cut some tracks in order to make room for new ones. I think the old crooner, Brian Ferry is going to almost disappear. But who will replace him? I don't like a lot of the recent music, which I find fairly tuneless and dull (the Kooks, Coldplay, Radiohead, etc, though I increasingly like the Kaiser Chiefs), so I might have to go back and look through my CDs again.

Brussels Ekiden

Last Saturday I participated in the Brussels Ekiden. What is an Ekiden? Well, wikipedia describe it as a a marathon relay, and say that it originated in Japan. Basically, a team of six runners run the full 42 km marathon distance, but divided into sections of 5, 10, 5, 10, 5 and & km. I ran the second 10 km section for my team.

We were disqualified.

I don't really know why, except that some of our runners times were wierd, to say the least. I suspect the timing system (automatic recording of runners starting and finishing via a chip that they attach to their shoes) messed up. One of us was shown as doing 5 km in 10 minutes! That is better than Olympic standard. So, rather than admitting they screwed up, they disqualified us. Still, I got my nice shiny medal, and a day out in sunny Brussels.