One night a year, the streets of a different Belgian city light up for the annual Q Run to You, a running event organized by one of our country’s biggest radio houses Q Music. In this joyful fun run, participants are invited to run, walk or jog their way through a magical night circuit.
This year’s location for the event was Mechelen, with its Nekkerhal as start and finish point. A splendid choice – both for its accessibility and the variety it brought to the actual running track, which involved several bridges and stairs, and provided a good mixture of road and grass running. Reason enough for people to get excited.
The excitement, however, does not only come from the cool decorations and non-competitive atmosphere. It is also brought up by the concept of the run: the Q Run to You is a duo run that does not allow single runners to join. Somewhere in the middle of the track, the duo’s are separated and the idea is then to run their ways back to each other and finish the race together.
I had originally signed up with Shannon but, due to medical reasons, she was forced to drop out a week beforehand and I decided to drag my dad along. I say “drag” because my dad is the kind of runner who thinks driving an hour to run a 5k is a “waste of time” and would only consider crossing the country for a half marathon or a 10k – if he has a special reason to. Fair to say, he wasn’t as excited as I was.
The Q Run to You completely changed his attitude around, though. I don’t know if it was the music, the lighting or the fact that there was a pasta stand at the finish – but he, too, absolutely LOVED the race. We ran most of the course together at a pace that we were both comfortable with – my dad is a much faster runner than I am – and made it to the finish line in under 35 minutes. Given that the course was around 5.5km, that was good for a pace of 06:06, which was an outdoor personal record for me. To top it off, it also made us place 189th and 190th out of 2,709 runners.
Hitting a PR was unexpected but totally gave me the drive to hit races again. As those of you who have read my first post know, I have a love/hate relationship with races. I greatly enjoy fun runs like Stramilano and RunDisney, but I tend to feel too inferior to do the ‘real’ stuff. Having finished within the 7%-group of fastest runners definitely boosted my confidence and I’m excited to go out there again and dare to dream of more achievements.
So, even though we skipped the afterparty – unless you count the pasta stand, ’cause pasta sure is a great afterparty for any workout – joining the Q Run to You was worth driving for.
Love and neon lights,
Julie
JuSh Fitness 