Trip to Another One Bites The Dust
human-writtenⓘ
Woke up early this morning. Not that that’s particularly unusual, but today was with a good reason: I’d promised my son to take him for a bike ride. You see, he’s quite an active little fella who needs his daily dose of physical activity. And I’m happy to fix him up :)
Now, I’ve always found that actually going somewhere is much more interesting than “just” going for a ride. It feels a lot less like training that way, haha.
So instead of riding around in a circle, I took my son to go see Another One Bites The Dust (AOBtD), an ultra race that was - and, at the time of writing, is still - being held in Bierbeek. That’s at some 20 km from where we live, aka the perfect distance for a saturday morning round trip.
Ultra what?
According to Wikipedia, an ultra running race is “any footrace longer than traditional marathon length of 42.195 km”. Some races run over a certain distance (e.g. 50km, 100km, 100 miles), and others last for a predetermined time (e.g. 24 hour runs).
Backyard / One More Loop type races are different: there is no predefined finish, either in distance nor time. Instead, participants run a short loop (typically 6.7 km or 4.167 miles, to make for 100 miles in 24 hours) once every hour. The last one standing wins, the others get DNF behind their names.
It’s safe to say it takes a special kind of special to even consider signing up for such a race.
Fun fact: earlier, in May, a Belgian, Merijn Geerts, set a new world record: he ran 90 loops of 6.7km in Rettert, Germany. That’s 603.5 km (!). In almost 4 days (!!). Without actual real sleep, other than the occasional 5-minute nap in between loops (!!!!😳)
Other fun fact: that same Merijn Geerts won the past three editions of AOBtD.
Impressions
So off we went on our bikes, to go superhero-spotting in Bierbeek. We arrived on the scene at around 10:35. Just in time to see the runners returning from their 15th loop of 5.959 km, meaning they had just started their 3rd marathon.
Atypical runners in an atypical race
I had expected to see sharp-as-a-knife athletes, well-equipped and looking serious and seriously tired.
And there were some of those, but they were definitely not the majority.
Instead, most were walking, chatting and smiling (!). Some wore a backpack, others what looked like shorts you’d wear to the beach. I saw only one runner with poles.
And there were no bib numbers to be seen, they wore removable ankle bracelets for time registration instead. I guess that makes changing shirts a lot more practical.
friendly & no-nonsense
My son and I were welcomed by a friendly lady, who explained that there was no entry fee. They did have an honesty box though, so we put in some
money and were told we could help ourselves to some drinks or food.
I think we were the only actual supporters; the rest of the people were runners, their crew, or the race crew. But we didn’t feel out of place or unwelcome at all.
Not much going on, but so much to see
The summer heat was coming up, I heard distant screaming from kids on a bouncy castle. I don’t remember any music though.
A smoldering camp fire filled the air with the scent of summer.
We just sat down, had a drink and watched runners coming in. At ten to eleven, when the next loop would start, someone shouted “Ten Minutes!”. Then nothing for five minutes.
At five to eleven (“Five Minutes!”) people started gathering at the gate, then progressively more as the start of the next hour and so the next loop approached. Some runners were still coming in and didn’t even take the time to sit down. Others took a chair to the start to sit and take naps until the last second, or were nibbling away a pack of salty crackers or candy.
Then, 11 o’clock came, someone blew a horn, everyone clapped, the runners ran - or walked - through the gate, and the campsite was calm and peaceful once more.
We headed back to our bikes, and rode back home.
Did this make an everlasting impression on my son? Probably not.
But at least it was a chance for him to see that ordinary looking people are capable of extraordinary feats 💪, and we got a good morning ride out of it too!