This is what I'll be doing next week

I'm starting to get very excited about being a part of this performance!  It's going to be challenging and interesting - like nothing I've ever done before.  My kids keep saying I better not trip!  On Monday evening we have a workshop, and on Friday we have to be at our city's theater at 2 pm for rehearsals, and then the performance is at 8.

One of the things I am curious about is how it will feel to be onstage in our theater - I have seen so many performances there, and it is a beautiful theater.  It was built in 1843 and was almost completely destroyed in the first world war, and then damaged again in World War II.

So think of me here, next Friday night. ;-)

Quick Update

Got two more hikes in:
#24: 9 km on Friday afternoon with Aisling
#25: 7.8 km with Stefaan on Sunday morning.

It's been absolutely gorgeous weather around here, bright and sunny, crisp and clear.  Perfect for walking.  I've also started a new Matt Roberts program at the gym.  I do love a good program!

Other than that, life is busy, what with my middle son, Gillis, just starting his first year in university.  They do grow up fast...

Recent Hikes (21, 22 & 23)

These pictures are from the hike around Averbode I did with Ingrid in June - it was such a beautiful day.  Too bad but it seems the summer weather is gone for good and we have entered fall now with its rain.  Since June, and since our trip to Sweden in August, I've gotten three more hikes in to bring my count up to 23 so far. 

 In August I met up with Leen, Jef, and their kids Lucas and Hannah for hike #21 in Bierbeek.  We did an enjoyable 9 km and treated ourselves to a beer afterwards.

 At the beginning of September, Ingid and I headed to Oud-Heverlee and the Dode Beemde for a section of this area we had never done before and hike #22.  We did 13.5 km in the rain!

 Finally, recently I had to take advantage of one of our last sunny weekdays and got out and hiked 5 km on my own in Kessel-Lo, bringing my hiking count up to 23, which I am pretty pleased with, and planning to get a few more in before the end of the year.

Hike #20 in Sweden!

We just got back from southern Sweden - my oldest son, Florian, is doing an Erasmus semester at the University of Lund, so we drove him up and got him settled, and then took some time to explore the area, which was beautiful.  Of course, for us, an important part of exploring is finding a national park and taking a hike, which we did near Dalby, in the National Park there.  We decided to try out the Ulastigen trail, which started with a very cool wood carved entrance-way:

A description of the trail:

It was a great way to spend one of our afternoons together, before we had to head back home and leave Florian behind in Sweden.  We'll see him again at Christmas.  Yes, there were tears when we drove away (mostly on my part - you know how mothers can be, right?)  but it will be a great experience for him to get out on his own and live in another country.  And there is always Skype...

Hikes #18 and #19: Gerolstein

For some reason, lately I've been bumping into a lot of articles about the benefits of walking/hiking in nature, and this one about the connection between walking and writing.  Fascinating!  And very true, I think.  Walking does help to organize your thoughts, brainstorm, and come up with new perspectives.  It's also a great activity to do as a family on a little vacation, which is what we did this past weekend in Gerolstein, Germany.

We love Gerolstein.  It's just 200 kilometers from door to door, there's a lovely hotel we like to stay at, and the long distance walking path called the Eifelsteig passes through the town.  The town itself is small and picturesque, and famous for its natural mineral water.  There is even a spring in the city park where you can fill your water bottle for free with the naturally sparkling water!  Most importantly, though, is the ancient volcanic history of the area which makes for incredible landscapes today: rolling hills, old craters, craggy dolomite formations, open fields and beautiful forests.  Our kids love the "Lord of the Rings" feel to it!

Yes. it made me very nervous when they climbed up there.

This is an ancient volcanic crater, and surprisingly deep.  One of my kids is just barely visible at the bottom.

We did two big hikes together, both about 10 kilometers and both ending up in the town of Gerolstein itself.  Which is handy because then you can treat yourself to something like this:

Hike #17

Just a quick post so I don't get behind on my count - yesterday Tanka and I did hike #17, the "Kessel-Lo Death March" which was a nice 2 hour, 9 km walk up and down hills, through fields, past cows, horses and sheep...and we were lucky because it only started raining after we got back.

This weekend we're heading off to one of our favorite hiking places, Gerolstein, Germany, with the whole family, so I will have more hikes and pics to post!  Have a great weekend, everyone!

Fun at the Barefoot Park

At the start: clean feet!

I posted about this a few years ago when we first visited the Barefoot Park in Zutendaal, but it was time for another visit - we heard they expanded the path to 3 kilometers and my son's girlfriend, Charlotte, had never been.  So off we headed to Limburg!

The path starts off gently, with sand, but quickly forces your feet to adapt to all kinds of surfaces: stones, mulch, tree stumps, logs, boulders, very cold water and...mud!  Lots of mud...

We took our time; the entire path took us well over an hour to complete.  But going barefoot is not as easy as it might seem - you end up using a lot of muscles in your feet and lower legs that are normally completely supported by shoes, so they have to work harder than they're used to.

At the end: dirty feet!

Definitely a fun activity to do on a summer afternoon!  But your feet and calves might be a bit sore the next day...

Interested in more?  Here's a short 2 minute video about the path:

Recent hikes

Just some quick stats on some recent hikes...

#16: Yesterday, with Ingrid, 15.5 km in and around Averbode Abbey (time 3h43m).  It was a gorgeous day and it was kind of neat to walk in three different provinces (Limburg, Antwerp, Vlaams-Brabant) in one afternoon.

#15: Last Monday, with Tanka, 8 km in the rain in Meerdaal Forest (time 1h48m).  Tanka is trying to get ready for a hiking trip in Peru, coming off a back injury this spring, so we agreed to walk together a few times this summer.

#14: Back in June, Ingrid and I did 14.5 km (time 3u40) in a gorgeous nature preserve which started at a famous local cafe called Napoleon's Bed.  Legend has it that Napoleon spent the night there in 1810 (and may or may not have seduced the farmer's daughter), hence the name.

We are in the Urban Trail After Movie!

Florian and I appear in the Urban Trail After Movie at 00:33, running down stairs in a park! See if you can spot us...

Brussels Urban Trail 10K

The Urban Trail series is relatively new here in Belgium; the idea behind it is to turn running a race into a fun way to explore a city.  The course typically includes running through novel locations like museums, tunnels, landmark buildings, and past tourist attractions.  So when I heard they were going to stage one in Brussels, Florian and I signed up right away.  

Thankfully the morning of the race was cooler than previous days had been (we'd been having a heatwave here in Belgium, with temps hitting 38 degrees C - not pleasant when you don't have air conditioning!), but it still promised to be a warm 25-28 degrees and sunny.  Florian and I were glad we were in one of the first starting waves, meaning we would start running at 9:20.  We bumped into my husband's cousin Luc while waiting for our turn to start; he was going to be in wave 4, starting 40 minutes later.

The idea behind the waves was to spread the field of runners out enough to ensure everyone could pass through all the narrower parts of the course smoothly.  As we lined up at the start, we could see that it was going to take a while before we actually got going.

They were letting runners through one-by-one in a chute system, to make sure that we were all spread out enough.

My friend Aisling was cheering us on and got this great picture of us as we came out of the chute:

Don't I look happy and excited here?  I had no idea at the time what a killer course I was going to have to face the next 90 minutes...

And off we went, as Aisling got a last shot of us, on our merry way...

The first thing we ran through was the Royal Library.  Through some reading rooms and then a darkened exhibition hall of rare books and then back out again.  This was just the beginning of innumerable flights of stairs we would be going up and down during the race, which made it tough.  Not to mention all the cobblestones and hills on the streets of Brussels!  Florian has a thing about not taking walk breaks, although he (thankfully) doesn't mind running at a very easy pace, but I told him I was not going to run up all those stairs - I walked them, and once I got to the top continued walking just until he turned around and caught me, and then I started running again - LOL!  

There was a major hold up of runners just before we entered the Jewish Museum.  I was really surprised we were going to run through it because I figured it would be considered too much of a security risk since the terrorist attack on it last year, but we queued up in a narrow alleyway and after 5 minutes wait or so, we were admitted into the Museum through a back door, went down some steps into a basement, and then wound ourselves up and down more flights of stairs all through the building, only to come out again through the front door and past the soldiers with machine guns guarding it.  This was probably the most memorable stop on the entire course!

We continued on, running past more landmarks, parks, hidden parts of Brussels I had never seen, up hills, down hills, up stairs, down stairs, through an inner city school where they had us run through the gymnasium where a boxing club was training as we passed, through the back door of the Marriot Hotel, up stairs to the grand ballroom where a DJ was playing a set in fluorescent disco lights and back out the main entrance.  We ran past all the major tourist sights, including Manneke Pis and the Grand Place, and surprised tourists as we dashed past the posh shops in the St Hubert Gallery.  We ascended all the stairs leading to the beautiful art deco cinema hall El Greco, went past the cathedral, through the park at the Royal Palace (more steep stairs to get up there), and the Bozar art museum, through more galleries, down more cobbled streets...it was actually an amazing course, unbelievable that they could make this happen.  And so despite how badly my hip and my hamstrings were killing me at the end, I was really glad we did it.  It was a lot of fun running through all these unexpected places and the volunteers did a great job making sure no one got lost.

The course was not timed, because the whole idea is to have fun, not run your fastest 10K.  But we had the Garmin with us, just to keep an eye on how we were doing pace-wise, and in the end it took us 90 minutes to finish the course.  Originally we had figured we'd need 75 minutes, but that was not taking all the stairs and the hold up at the Jewish Museum into account.  So we were pretty pleased with our time.

Not having really trained for this, I was very pleased to have been able to finish strong, although I was pretty sore the next day - strangely enough, a lot of back pain, but I put that down to the pounding on the cobblestones and all the stairs.  Oh, those killer stairs...I will never forget all those flights of stairs...

And if you've actually made it this far into my very long winded post, I will reward you with a short (40 second) video with some of the highlights of the course:

This should be interesting!

I just signed up to be an "extra" in this theater production here in Leuven in November:

 

 They were looking for 165 active people from Leuven of all shapes and sizes to participate.  I fit the bill for that (I'm active and I'm definitely a shape and a size) and it sounded intriguing, so I signed up.  There will be a workshop and a rehearsal on the day of the performance (November 27).  This will definitely be a novel experience!  Anyone interested in joining me or coming to see the performance?  More info here.

Hike #13: Wijngaardbergwandeling with old friends

Location: Wezemaal
Distance: 7 km
With: Eleanor and Jordan

I've known Eleanor and Jordan ever since my first year in Belgium (1989!) when we were both here on Fulbright grants; I was in Leuven and they were in Liege.    I've been lucky the past few years; as their trips to Europe have landed them in Belgium, we've made time to meet up.

Last year I suggested that we plan to do a walk together the next time they came.  They are much more experienced walkers than I am; they've done many GR segments all over France and Belgium.  So when they told me when they could meet up this year, I wanted to have an interesting route for them, which led me to choose the Wijngaardberg ("Vinyard mountain") walk not far from Leuven, where I'd be picking them up at the train station.

We had a great time hiking up the Wijngaardberg, wandering through the orchards on top (including getting lost for a little while; we were too busy talking and missed some route signage - you know how that goes when you have an afternoon to catch up on a whole year that's gone by), and then winding down through the vinyards on the other side.  We stopped to light a candle in a roadside chapel (praying for safe travels for them the next day and exam success for my children in the coming weeks), and then finished our walk with a local beer at the very authentic cafe Bij Boeres next to the church in the village.

What a perfect way to spend an afternoon with old friends!

Hike #12: spotting wildlife in Meerdaal Forest

Location:  Meerdaal Forest
Distance: 8.9 km
Time: 2:20
With: Kristien

We were lucky - with the storms the previous evening and the storms that were predicted for later in the day, the time we had planned to walk together was actually dry and pleasant walking weather.  We did a big route through the forest.  At one magical moment, we suddenly noticed a young deer in a sort of clearing just off the trail.  We stopped to watch, expecting her to dart away, but she simply took notice of us and then continued leisurely foraging for food.   We stood there for several minutes, watching her, and then continued on.  Very cool!

Hike #11: Vinyards and Orchards!

With: Ingrid
Distance: 15 km
Time: 3 hours 40 minutes

Spring is just such a great time to do long walks.  We were very lucky with the weather this Saturday, too - no rain, not too warm, and not too sunny.  Perfect walking weather.  We set off from the village of Nieuwrode, a rural community in the Hageland region, which meant rolling hills, lots of orchards and vinyards would be on our path.  The countryside is idyllic at this time of year:

We passed many orchards with young apple trees; the blossoms were in full bloom:

There is a great network of paths through this area.

Finally we ended up making our way through a series of vinyards.  More and more wine is being produced in the Hageland area.  I'm going to have to buy some and do some taste testing!

A chapel out in the field, dedicated to Saint Joseph;

could he be the patron saint of wine?

Tired but happy we completed 15 kilometers!

Public service announcement for runners, walkers, hikers and bikers

It is a gorgeous spring day today, so I went out for a run this morning.  But I've been doing something different the past month.  Instead of just putting my shoes on, strapping my Garmin to my wrist and grabbing my key, I took two other items with me:

My phone and my ID.  Which in the past I never bothered to take.  Especially for just a short run or walk around the neighborhood.  But now I do.  Every time I run or walk or hike or bike.

Last month my mother, who is a pretty active 72-year-old, went out for a walk, and less than a half mile from her house, was hit by a car.  While crossing a street at a crosswalk, with the traffic light, she was hit by an SUV turning left into the street that had not seen her.  She was really lucky: aside from being really shook up, she suffered a broken wrist.  We all realized it could have been a lot worse, and are grateful it wasn't.  She's had surgery to repair her wrist in the meantime, and is doing well.

But the thing is, had she been knocked unconscious, no one would have known who she was or been able to contact anyone in our family.  Because my mother did what I usually did when going out for a short walk or a run - she left the house with nothing more than a key in her pocket.

You never think anything is going to happen to you in your own neighborhood or on your familiar trails...but it can happen anytime, to anyone of us.  So don't forget your ID and/or a phone!

Inagural running event in Brussels and my first race in 3 years!

 I just checked my records and it's been three years since I participated in an organized running event!  My last race was the Ladies Run in Leuven in May 2012; I ran the 10K in 1:01:36, a pretty respectable time for me back when I was running very regularly.

As some of you know, I took a whole year off running for a hip injury and have been slowly reincorporating running back into my routine the past two years.  My oldest son, Florian, has also been doing more running, mainly to participate in a 24-hour relay team to raise money for cancer research in a few weeks.  So when I saw there was a new race in Brussels, I asked him if he wanted to do it with me, and I left the choice of distance up to him.  There was going to be a 5K and a 10K; he chose the 5K, which was fine with me.  Much less daunting to get prepared for!

We were so lucky yesterday, the weather was gorgeous and we headed to the big King Baudoin Stadium in Brussels where the race would start.  This stadium is where all the national football (soccer) team's matches take place, as well as a very well known athletics meet, the Memorial Van Damme.  So it was pretty impressive to be able to walk out onto the track and be able to start our race in the stadium.

The course was surprisingly hilly!  We went straight up a hill as we ran out of the stadium, and then through some parks in the area with quite some ups and downs.  This is not the race you would want to run for a PR.  Towards the end we got to run right under the Atomium, Brussels' answer to the Eiffel Tower, which we decided was worth pulling the camera out and taking a short stop to get a snapshot of:

By the time we passed the Atomium, my Garmin was telling me we were very near to 5 km, which we hit right around 35 minutes.  However, the course kept on going and led us into one of the big expo halls, where there was loud techno music, flashing lights and cheerleaders to welcome you as you finished.  By the time we crossed the finish line, were handed our medals, and I remembered to turn it off, the Garmin said 5.37 km and 39 minutes.  We were pretty pleased with our time, considering the hilly course and that it was actually longer than 5K.  We got our sports drink and waffle and got the heck out of that loud, dark hall and back into the gorgeous spring weather...

Doing the race yesterday reminded me of how fun it is to do a well organized big event in a neat location.  Especially when you have a great person to run with - Florian stuck with me the whole way, and was great company.  We really enjoyed ourselves.  So yes, we have already decided we'd do this one again - but perhaps the 10K next time...

Thoughts on Being an Urban Ranger (and hike #10)

I've been listening to podcasts by Katy Bowman lately while cooking and cleaning (my favorite time to listen to podcasts!)  Bowman is a biomechanist who is a proponent of natural human movement.  She talks about how most of us are starved for more variation in our movement nutrients - because of factors like doing the same repetitive movements all time, sitting a lot, wearing shoes most of the day and being in primarily flat environments.  It's fascinating to hear her ideas, and think about my own patterns of movement, and how they effect how my body feels and functions.

I learned the hard way that doing too much of the same thing (running) all the time was not good for my hip.  I took a full year off of running, let my body heal, learned to incorporate other types of movement into my routine, and finally was able to add running back into my life.

One of the things that Bowman promotes is walking as an ideal exercise, and especially if you can get off the usual flat sidewalks and into uneven, hilly terrain that makes your body move with even more variation.  But in an urban environment, that is sometimes tricky to figure out.  So I was thinking about the Grandes Routes long distance hiking paths that run through our community and how I could add more trail walking to my urban rangering (this original idea of purposeful sustained walking comes from Reinhard Engels ) - which means, bascially, trying to add more rugged terrain to walks I do for errands.

I often walk or bike to one of my favorite stores, the Bio-Planet organic grocery store.  By the most direct route, it's 2.7 km away and takes about a half hour to walk.  Aside from one part of the walk that goes through a city park, most of it is along a busy road, which is loud, smelly and kind of boring.  But I figured out how I could get there by a completely different route, which includes a long chunk of trails that go through fields (and part of a GR route!), which is what I tested out this morning.  It was great - I felt like such an adventurous urban ranger!  The new route included lots of rugged ups and downs, and ended up being 3.85 km and took me 45 minutes to walk.  It felt really good to be out in the cold spring sunshine, seeing all the green, and the best part about much of the walk was the traffic noise I didn't have to hear.  The only bad part was a lady with a very large dog who was trying to get the dog to sit while I passed her and just as I was almost past them, he lunged at me.   That really startled me.  I never used to be afraid of dogs but the more I walk and hike, the warier I've become.

After getting to the store and buying the things I needed, I did go back the usual way which made for a total of 6.55 km and about 75 minutes altogether.  A good way to spend my morning - enjoyable walking with a purpose!

Hike #9: Langdorp

Distance: 12 km
Time: 3 hours
With: Ingrid

Having been forced to cancel our February walk because of the flu, I was looking forward to meeting up with Ingrid yesterday.  We picked a circular route that started in Langdorp, a village just outside of Aarschot.  As is often the case, our route started at the church:

We were a bit apprehensive about the weather, but as we started out the sun was shining, despite ominous clouds on the horizon:

A few unusual sights during our hike - a windmill:

And this funny sign -  "yield to gnomes"???  Unfortunately we didn't see any gnomes.

So through the woods we went...

And then back into the fields for the end of the hike

We did get rained on, and it was cold, but here is proof that the sun did come out at some point:

...and at times the sky was gorgeous:

We ended up back where we started, at the church, where we found a cafe and had some hot tea to warm ourselves up.  It was a good day.