Date: 8-9 August 2014
Goal: Arrival within 24h
Finish: 23h
Rank: no ranking
Shoes: Nike Flyknit 2014 (excellent, no blisters)
Website: http://www.dodentocht.be/
“Any marathon, in any time, but no 100k again.“
Those were my words after this 24h challenge. In fact, it was not a race, just a hike against the watch, 24h to complete the 100k loop. Very tempting! The only thing you have to do: keep on walking. How hard can that be? As any normal person could guess, very hard 😐.
The first time it occurred to me that this could become quite a challenge was during a training 50k-walk three weeks out. It took us (with friends) roughly 10h, and I was pretty knackered afterwards, with some blisters on my feet (and all this despite my already existing running and marathon experience).
But we had it pretty well planned. We were four walkers, our friends Baris and JB, Marina and I (see picture above). We performed several training walks on weekends, even for several hours at night. On top of that, I brought my walks to work to perfection – I felt like looking one of those competition walkers: very loose hips, jiggling butt – with the goal of making those 8km below one hour; and I managed (starting from 1h15!).
The walk itself is not a competition: no ranking, no ‘official’ winner, and one cannot finish the course in under 10 hours. (well you obviously can, but you’ll have to wait at the finish line until they open – very Belgian style.)
What we had NOT really practised, was doing all this in pouring rain – because there never was pouring rain, strangely enough for Belgium, even in mid-summer.
The walk was going to start on a Friday evening at 9pm, and most of us took the day off to keep our legs up and relaxed. The afternoon was warm and sunny but the forecast was on storms and heavy rain. And as unreliable as the weather forecast usually is in Belgium, so reliable it was that evening. Not lying nor exaggerating, at 21:00 sharp everyone started moving and so did the skies. Heavy rain pouring down on us, and it should not stop until 2 or 3 in the morning – I don’t recall that well. We tried for 20-30min to find shelter under some roofs, phone booths, umbrellas but realised soon enough that this storm was far from being over and that we had to get moving if we wanted to complete the course within the time limit of 24h (side-comment: my good-old leather hat from Australia was a real treat here!).
The course itself is quite fantastic for such an event (considering the rather unexciting flemish flatlands…). The first 20km lead out of the town Bornem (start and finish) after which one has to cross the city again – by that time past midnight if you don’t belong to runners who would obviously complete this in less time. And by then the whole city is a party. Everyone out on the streets. Each and every garage either turned into a disco, a Hock (German for sitting around on beer sets, drinking – beer), or a live band; all in all pretty impressive and motivating.
From then on it started getting hard.
You leave the town by 2-3 a.m. into the dark (and rainy) night on dirt roads, hearing the party behind, darkness and silence (and tiredness) ahead.
Some rain showers still caught us and we searched for shelter under trees now and then; just to realise that this was kind of useless and we should just get going.
In the next town, early morning before sunrise, we found a dry spot beside a garage to dry off for a couple of minutes and to treat our legs. Food stations were located approximately every 5-7km, with freshwater, drinks, cakes, etc. which every single one we took as little goals in the dark and wet night.
Then came (almost) the best part of the whole tour: 6am, sunrise and bière à volonté (as much as you want for free – well, you’ll have to walk 45km during the night for it) in the Duvel brewery. A warm soup, and indeed, bière à volonté: I think I was the only one of our group taking one – but it was (kinda) delicious 😄 !
With new spirits, motivation, and refreshed legs we continued, to the next big milestone: the 50k mark was just ahead, with a warm pasta and bag drop (fresh cloths) waiting on us.
And indeed, having the half-distance point crossed, the skies cleared up, it got pretty warm in the morning at 7 a.m. and the day started out beautiful. Less beautiful for our friend JB, who heavily struggled with his feet beyond this point (those were not made for walking, not for more than 50k). And he had to let us go after the next checkpoint (around 56km), where neither a massage could get his feet back into normal operation mode. For myself, I had another pair of shoes in my drop back at 50k (Nike Boost from 2011), however, after walking in them for 1 km I decided ‘bad choice’ and went back to my original choice (Nike Flyknit, no blisters, no problem).
Towards the afternoon, the first actual (physical) problems started appearing.
My thighs had hardened from all that walking, pulling on my patellar tendon, causing some pain below the knee cap. In fact, during the last hours of the walk, this should develop into patellar tendonitis, which I had to struggle with for the following months. To my luck, I had no problems running, while walking was quite painful (by now I had grabbed a stick for some support). So Marina and I started running the last 20 km (should have done so muuuch earlier 😊) ahead of the group to the next food stations (4-6 km apart).
While Marina was also struggling with knee pain, Baris suffered heavily from blisters on both feet. In fact, his foot might have been more of a blister than of a feed. So it is quite amazing that we three still made it to the finish (in time).
At the last checkpoint / food station we were actually roughly 1h ahead of schedule and could target a finish time of 23 hours. In conclusion, we had time for a drink and some relaxation before attacking the last 5 km of the walk.
Arriving back to Bornem, the atmosphere was amazing and the mood started boosting – although 500m before the finish line I still was in my jog-trot and did not have many eyes for the surrounding.
Passing through the finish – again a Duvel for free and a honey cake, well done! 😊 🍺
My personal takeaway: Great adventure but 100 km are clearly too much to just walk (both mentally and physically), any other attempt will be at least half running; if doing it alone probably all running…
Thanks, JB, Baris and Marina for this adventure (and to Sophia and tiny Timo for their support during the last few kilometres)! 👍🏻
Fun.Run.Dad 