Belgium Chapter

Getting ready

JuergenBruynooghe — Sun, 09 Nov 2008 11:28:16 -0800

While the cross-country has started already here in Belgium, I have to wait until the end of December to start my indoor season. I thought there would be about 8 meetings I could do, but 2 of them turned out to be for youth only. So I'll have 6 meets to show that I am faster than last year. The main competition is scheduled for 4 January when I'll do the provincial championships. Maybe I'll combine both 60m and 200m, I'll decide after my first 60 and 200m of the season on 20, 26 and/or 27 December. Hopefully I can get into the final of the 60m.

In the meantime I got my number for this season, unfortunately I can't wear the OA singlet while competing, but before and afterwards I'll wear my OA t-shirt proudly! Now all I've got to do is train hard, rest enough and ran as fast as I can. Training in Belgium is harder than in Sebastopol, but that's the way it is. There are no other options than face the cold(er) weather and the rain. Actually I can't complain too much so far, as the gods above decided to keep the heavens closed when I was at the track. Let's hope they are willing to keep it that way.

Last week I started working again. It felt like I've never left for 3 months, everything seem to be the same. Same people on the train, same people at work, ... Also the same cramp problem (calves) at training after commuting that long on the train. It's strange, on Fridays I'm sitting almost the entire day, but I work at home and can do all excercises at the track without problems. As I've tried almost everything, the cause must be the train ride.

People at work seem to be happy that I'm back, I wished I had the same feeling. :) Not that it's that bad, but it's time for some changes in my life. At the end of the year I wanna make a decision. Looking for a job abroad or nearer my hometown, or either moving towards Brussels.

The best part of my working day is the lunch break. While most people stay inside the building (either their office or the cafetaria) I go for a walk in the park aside the building where I'm working. This is my favourite place in Brussels. The crazy thing about it is that the park is overcrowded on hot days, but as soon as it's a little less warm or sunny, you see much less people. The only constant are the runners. You see all kinds of runners: women and men, young and old, black and white, joggers and people who seemed to be chased by ghosts, ... It is really great to see. Once I did my running at noon too, just like them. It was before I started focussing on sprint. I often want to go out there and start running again. It was nice to cut the day in two with a short run. Maybe I just should start doing it again! If it fits in my workout scheme, you might see me do some laps around the park this winter.

Last week I've been wearing my OA jacket on the train. In the morning and the evening it is too cold to wear only my normal jacket, so I wore the OA jacket too. It was funny to see many people watch the jacket. It looks like it is a really attractive jacket. Let's hope I can promote OA in this way. I've been writing an article about my US trip for the magazine of my athletics club, and in the first issue of next year there should be an interview with Bradley in the magazine of EVA (Ethical Vegetarian Alternative). I added an article I wrote before in EVA Magazine in the section News clippings of this website, featuring OA proactivists Tonya Kay, Christine Vardaros and Scott Jurek. Check it out!

Another thing I did was a booth of EVA in Middelkerke (at the North Sea), where we did some promotion for EVA and their campaign "Donderdag Veggiedag" (= Thursday veggie day). It seems more countries are having a similar campaign trying people to convince to start eating plant-based meals on one day of the week. Unfortunately every country seems to have this day on a different day. Thursday, Friday, Monday. Nevertheless it's great if more people are prepared to eat vegetarian or vegan on one day of the week. Hopefully they'll become fully veggie that way.

The booth was at an organic, ecological and health fair. I thought there would be more companies with food, but I took a wrong guess. It was funny though because the fair was in the casino. It was free and there were many elderly or people with kids carrying shovels and buckets. I was at the booth in the morning and I had one older man who seemed really worried that we would take his steak away. At the official opening of the fair there were soft bread rolls, but few were vegetarian (although the cheese might not have been vegetarian). It still seems contradictory that there is no healthy vegan food at a 'health' fair. The first day I didn't have food with me and once again I could only notice that vegans are an exception in this country, as few people know what it means. I could only find a place where they had baguettes and I ordered a 'veggie' one without eggs and cheese. If I hadn't watched the girl, I'd had eggs between the baguette...

Speaking of food. In the US I didn't have a television, nor did I read magazines and papers. Back in Belgium I was shocked by the crap out there. Health problems solving drugs, your daily amount of veggies and fruits in a small bottle, Eat/drink this, take vitamins and minerals, ... Commercials for meat and dairy with the help of the governments and the EU... It's disgusting! And then people tell you that you're gonna lack several nutrients. My grand father showed me an article of a health service 'Is vegetarianism' healthy'. I didn't even the crap, as he told me I'd have undoubtely deficients. My grand mother thinks I eat too much. Telling her that you have to eat more to get the same amount of calories as meat eaters doesn't seem to get through. My dad keeps telling he doesn't know what the hell I'm eating. If you don't eat meat, dairy, fish and other animal products, what's left? Sometimes I get tired of explaining everything, as next time they'll ask the same things, over and over again. Just being an example doesn't seem to be enough, even the excellent results of blood analyses don't seem be enough to convince them.

What I realised now I'm back in Belgium is how great it was to see the OA chapters doing all kinds of things together: training, potlucks, organising events, doing rides together, ... Being together with like-minded people who support you and your choices, encourage you while competing or just riding, just having a good time. Being one big family. I am really happy I am a part of this big OA family! Wished I was in California or Portland though. ;)

Belgium Chapter

Upcoming indoor track season

JuergenBruynooghe — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 20:46:04 -0700

These days I've been working hard to get ready for the upcoming indoor season in Belgium. I haven't made up my mind yet whether I'll run only 60m events, or whether I'll do the 200m event too. At this moment, the most important day of the indoor season will be January 4th, when the Provincial Championships take place in Ghent. I'll do a couple more meetings, which take place in Ghent, as we only have one indoor hall.

Training is going very well so far, I've done much more work outs than I usually do, but here in Sebastopol I have the opportunity to train hard. Almost every day you can find me in the morning on the Analy High School track and 4 or 5 days a week I can be found in Coaches Corner for some power training.

From time to time I do some other thinhs too, peer pressure here at the OATC. Yesterday I had rest on my schedule, but nevertheless I wanted to experience the Hill Climb Challenge. I hadn't been on a bike since the Portland Tour d'Organics (except for the ride to Graton Day and back), and I didn't know what to expect: I don't know many roads around Sebastopol and I definitely had no idea what hill was waiting for me. I started after Jane and Bradley, and although I didn't get caught by the riders who started behind me, I really felt terrible on that hill. Nevertheless, I was glad that I had done it and the smile I had lost during the climb came back afterwards. :)

Running Team

Lecture of Christine Vardaros in Brussels

JuergenBruynooghe — Sun, 04 May 2008 08:53:28 -0700

Hi,

My name is Jürgen and I’m living in Belgium, a small European country. When I learned about OrganicAthlete, I decided to become a member immediately. Being a member may be nice, but after some time it gets quite boring, especially if there are no activities in your neighbourhood. Travelling to the States for every OA activity is not an option, so it’s time to let Europe know OrganicAthlete exists! We definitely need more OA members to meet together!

I work as a volunteer for EVA vzw (Ethical Vegetarian Alternative) and there we decided to do something with vegetarianism and sports. In name of this Belgian vegetarian organization, I organized a lecture on plant-based sport nutrition on 19 April in Brussels. As Christine Vardaros lives in Belgium and is a succesful professional athlete, she is the ideal person to talk about plant-based sports nutrition.

Christine proved to be an eloquent speaker, with an enormous baggage on plant-based sports nutrition. All of the participants agreed that this lecture was a splendid activity. Christine proved that you don’t need meat, dairy, etcetera, to perform at your best. She refuted the following myths:

- You can’t perform well on a vegan diet
- A vegan diet is complicated
- It’s hard to maintain while living in Belgium, travelling, eating at restaurants
- You can’t possibly get enough protein and other nutrients

Many things Christine talked about, were very recognizable for the participants. But how do you reply when asked where you get your protein or when told you won’t get enough iron? Many veg(etari)an athletes don’t dispose of the right information, so it proves to be hard to counter false statements or myths.

People need to be (re-)educated on proper plant-based whole food nutrition. In that sense, lectures such as this one are very interesting and useful. It was one of the first real activitis of EVA that had a connection with sports. It was a modest start, now the train needs to be kept going. Soon the OA Guide to Sports Nutrition will be available in Dutch!

To be continued, stay tuned!

Cheerz from Belgium.

Belgium Chapter