Kortrijk Loopt 2011

Yesterday, a lot of recreational runners gathered at sports centre De Lange Munte to participate in Kortrijk Loopt, a quite commercial running event here in my city.  I was one of those participants and decided to go for the full 11km, just to check the status of my physical fitness and to have a reference race for future comparisons. Here are some pictures of state-of-the-art running-action:

Unfortunately, Murphy stroke me again... after a full one and a half minute of racing, the battery of my Garmin Forerunner 305 decided to give up... so there I was for the rest of the race without the technology that would deliver me all the statistics that a scientist could ever dream of! Luckily, there was a backup solution: the electronic time recording setup by the organizers. However, big was my surprise this morning when I found myself classified as a 'Did Not Finisher' in the end results! Of course I finished! Of course I would not give up on a stupid 11km race like this! Who the hell did they think they are, putting me in the DNF status!

I immediately emailed the organizers and after a few minutes got a friendly reply saying they were looking into it. And yes, a few hours later, they seem to have corrected my result. I am now listed 85th out of 929 starters of which 914 finished the race. I have squeezed the 11 km in 46m03s, which gives me an average speed of 14.34 km/h or 4m12s per kilometer. The complete results can be found here. The organizers assured me the correctness of my result with the following email:

Dag Bart, 

Deze uitslag is 100% zeker en geregistreerd door onze computers.

Normaal gezien moet je over 2 aankomstmatten lopen bij de finish. Deze liggen net achter elkaar, het tijdsverschil is dus haast nihil. De gecombineerde registratie levert je resultaat op. Als 1 van beiden ontbreekt, vissen we je resultaat op door de jouw registratie op 1 van beide matten op te zoeken. Deze uitslag is betrouwbaar en correct en bewijst het nut van een dubbele registratie aan de aankomst.  

Vriendelijke groeten, 
Lien

I guess this means I can be 100% sure of my result... *fwew*... Murphy didn't strike that hard after all!