TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Sunday's run in Brugge was highly successful. Though my preparation was less than optimal - painful left knee in the days prior and a heavy football match on Saturday followed by the club's end of season bash - conditions conspired to make it a good day. It was so hard to find parking space that I only arrived at the starting area fifteen minutes before GO, leaving me little time to fiddle around nervously. The weather had changed to a wonderful 16 degrees C with a slight breeze for additional cooling. And all along the 14.3 kilometers circuit spectators were flanking the roads in large numbers, contributing to a great atmosphere.

Of course, with over 5,000 runners on the small roads, the start was slow. Just before leaving home, I had decided to adjust my target from finishing in 1h30m to finishing in 1h24m. That meant an average of about 5m50s per kilometer. As it happened, I did the first in 5m45s and the following four or five kilometers in about 5m30s each.

And then I really got into my stride.

Head down for most of it, floating on the rhythm of my pace and breath and the noise from the audience, I ran lighter than ever before. Not each kilometer point was marked, and much to my surprise I reached the 11k point in 58m40s (that's about the best time I had previously run over 10 kilometers!). I even picked up pace further to finish in under 1h15m. That's 19 minutes faster than a year earlier on the same run.

And I wasn't even that tired...

Promising. If I'm fit and conditions are right, I should be able to make my target for the Brussels 20k on 27 May: finish in less than 2 hours. At Sunday's pace, I'd even get close to 1h45m. But that'd really be pushing it, also because Brussels is much hillier than Bruges.

Still, it feels like I've reached the next level indeed. I used to finish my races among the last 20% of the runners. In Bruges I finished number 2,530 out of the 5,000 that started. Pretty soon, I'll rank among the 50% fastest runners.