The trip

Up to this point, the largest challenge that I’d taken on was running a marathon. A lot of them had been hard with the wind in Brighton, the Sun in Sweden and the sand in Botswana, but they all had just been one marathon separated by at least a week. I was now crossing into the abyss planning to do two marathons in two countries in two days. I didn’t know if my body would be able to handle it but went for it anyway and luckily it paid off. I was planning to run in Brussels and Amsterdam over one weekend without a day off work.

This was also the first rail-based itinerary. We were getting the Eurostar from London to Brussels, then another train to Amsterdam then a return Eurostar from Amsterdam the next day.

To give myself the maximum amount of time to take it easy in Belgium, we were on a very early train out of St Pancress. My Amex card luckily let us use the business class lounge despite only having a basic ticket. The terminal was absolutely rammed so this was quite a nice escape. We grabbed some breakfast whilst we waited. They also had cans in the fridge and I definitely didn’t take a few soft drinks and beers in the very limited remaining space in my rucksack.

The train to Brussels was largely uneventful. It left on time, we saw some fields, then darkness, then some more fields and two or three hours later we arrived. We had about 7 hours in Belgium between our first train arriving and our train out departing. Through this larger challenge, some countries will get longer trips where I explore more and some trips will get less. No disrespect to Belgium only getting half a day, it’s not personal, it’s just logistics.

Although saying that, the initial impression of Brussels was not positive walking through the wide underpass that I assume had a few tracks running over the top. It smelt very bad. We were heading towards Parc de Bruxelles and our opinions gradually improved as we got closer. Ciara was with me again on this trip and the usual waiting place of a hotel room wasn’t available as we weren’t spending a night in the city. Therefore, I had to come up with a route that would give her somewhere reasonable to wait for a few hours. As the sun was out, the park seemed like by far the best option. There were picnic benches around a cafe hut which had toilets on the back and the park was flat with well defined paths and just about large enough for me to be able to do the full marathon there. After Botswana though, you probably could have built flats on 90% of the park and I’d still have given it a go.

The park was about a mile up hill from Brussels-Midi. As this was a race against time where I didn’t want to overcook my body, I started the watch as we walked to clock in all the distance I could. We got to the park and there was a free bench so Ciara took a seat and I took off my bag. We briefly strategised about the logistics of the day, intended pace, timing of breaks between laps and that sort of thing. A fair few breaks were intended to break up the boring wait for Ciara and so that I could watch the bags and keep the seat if she wanted to get something from the cafe.

Once she was set up with her book and a hot chocolate I set off for my first lap. Parc de Bruxelles is effectively a rectangle with a perimeter of about halfway between a kilometre and a mile and a few paths crossing the middle horizontally and diagonally. The marathons in small campsites in Southern Africa were unintentionally the perfect training for this sort of half mental half physical challenge. It quickly became a game of clockwise, anti-clockwise, long lap, short lap.

The cafe and benches were slightly in from the main perimeter path hidden by trees so I couldn’t see Ciara on most of the laps, only when I chose one of the crossing paths did I come close to the cafe. After the best part of an hour I took the first break to see how she was getting on. She was fine so after a bit of a chat, water and a gel I was off again for more fun.

There really isn’t much to say about this run as it was just more of the same. Run laps, chat to Ciara, more laps, another rest, more running. There was a nice fountain at the epicentre of some of the paths. There were some embassies and political looking buildings around the outside of the park. The royal palace bordered the park to the South which was definitely the most visually appealing part of Brussels that we saw. There was also some sort of music festival or event going on in the park but it was in a secluded section hidden by trees so I didn’t bother to check it out. The Sprite and Fanta from the lounge came in handy when my energy levels were starting to fall.

Eventually, I was on the move for my final set of laps as the 26.2 approached. It took a little over five hours in total which was pretty much exactly what I was aiming for. Quick enough to make the next train but slow enough to not destroy my legs.

We walked back to the train station whilst considering our options. We had a little bit of extra time so I got changed in the station toilets, refilled my water bottles at the fountain and then we went exploring for an hour. This only really involved a quick look at the Manneken Pis and a walk around some of the surrounding streets. And then it was back to the train station and on the next train to the Netherlands

Evidence