Close to home: Houttrail

Indoors. Been there, done that, got the cookie. Back on the trails with the MST Covid-19 challenge.

The past few weeks it has been awfully quiet on this blog. I admit: corona makes me quite anxious. Not only because I belong to the at-risk group with diabetes, but especially because I know what pneumonia does to your body. And because I also seem to be sensitive to it.

Of course, it's not that I haven't done anything in terms of training over the past few weeks. The normal daily 10,000 steps did fall away (attack on your blood sugar level), but I continued running at a lower level. Purely because exhaustion makes your immune system less strong when you catch the virus. So I limited myself to laps of about 10 kilometres. And longer stretches on the Me-Mover because that's less stressful.

My body and temper didn't get any better. I miss my running buddies, miss the long distances and the fulfilled feeling running long distance gives me. With the Me-Mover I also went further and further. 50+ km to the coast and more than 60 to the Reeuwijkse Plassen. Cool and it makes me long for even harder training, but it's not running. Last week I had really had enough: holiday to Mallorca is cancelled, lockdown extended, Skye also seems unlikely. So Sunday I ran another longer lap, eventually 21 km on the road. And a little later I also saw the MST Challenge.

Anyone who knows me a little knows that I'm not much of a virtual runner. It often feels like buying a medal instead of a challenge. So why am I taking part in this? The trail has to meet a number of conditions: 90 percent unpaved, at least 19 km, at least a watercrossing and you have to run it within a short period of time (I'm one day late due to planning).

Virtual

Additional condition is actually that the trail must be close to home. This is certainly necessary for me as well, because I don't want to be in running clothes taking public transport as long as transport companies spread the message that you are only allowed to make necessary trips. But the polder is not known for trails and the nearest unpaved trails in my area are even closed of because of the breeding season…

In a small radius you have Meijendel (just too far by bike from here) and Bergschenhoek near Outdoor Valley. There I tested the King MT earlier this year on the course of the Petzl Night Trail. Although that course meets all the requirements, I only feared the stretches of golf course and road closures I had already encountered there with the Me-Mover. These are also maintained: running or cycling over a closed parking lot results in a conversation with a police officer (fortunately not immediately a fine).

Therefore I had to come up with an alternative plan. Suddenly I remembered there would be a Houttrail in Delft. Ok, I was a little skeptical about that, were there enough unpaved paths?, but I decided to take my chances.

Is this Delftse Hout?

The plan was to take the bike to the nearest part of the route, so not to the official start. However, when I opened our shed, a setback was already waiting for me: the rear tire of my city bike was completely flat. Even though I had recently inflated it… A frantic attempt later, it was back on a couple of bars. I crossed my fingers in the hope that the deflation was due to a valve that wasn't closed properly (French type) and threw a hand pump in the bag. I was glad already that I hadn't opted for a more distant trail.

Once I arrived at De Viergang, I could quickly start at the point around 7 km from the route starting point. Now Delftse Hout is actually the standard environment for the Koplopers training group, but I almost didn't recognize the area. It was very nice, unfortunately also busy on wednesday afternoon, and full of flowery flutes. The latter was a disappointment, as I was struggling with hay fever. The lungs felt stuffy and I was dragging my feet. But a nice environment and clearly no corona related asphyxiation, because further on the path things got better.

Navichaos

Not to beat myself up, but normally I'm quite a hero at navigating the Phoenix 5x. Even when the directions stop, which they soon did because there were so many turns in the route, that about 5 kilometers (12 from official start) later the 50 directions were already used. But that forest behind the Ikea…

Where did it go wrong? Well, several points: the paths wrap around each other, at a distance smaller than the error in gps, while there is also a thick foliage, and some paths are in reality (partly) overgrown. I got hopelessly stuck there, and because of that this stage became very slow even though I had no troubles breathing there. The stupid thing is: I know this part from the training and the annual oliebollencross. But I was glad to continue beyond the Ikea.

Water Crossing

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The surroundings of Delftse Hout, Bieslandse Bos and Dobbeplas are full of ditches, canals, puddles and beaches. It really is a beautiful environment that I have seriously underestimated for trailing. The water crossing was just a bit more difficult. It wasn't in the route and a lot of water seemed pretty deep. Fortunately there is also a piece of Bieslands Bos with all kinds of crossings with tree trunks. Now Marc Weening knows after the Lanzarote adventure that stability is not my thing, so that I choose water there, only saves an involuntary dive … Unfortunately I do not have a nice picture of it, but I succeeded in getting dredge – thanks for the stench Marc – high up on the shins.

After the crossing I also arrived at the Dobbeplas on better known terrain. Also very nice with all the flowering rapeseed and unfortunately cow parsley again. After this experience I can certainly recommend the trailing close to home. Maybe you will be as surprised as I am at the Houttrail.

Still, I'll have to do a little more on the road in the near future. For that I have already bought a new pair of Escalante Racers at Mud Sweat Trail’s Store. Buy locally and hopefully in these times we can keep the trail infrastructure in one piece for when we can run races again.

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