20km de Bruxelles 2007

1:43:50

Yesterday (Sunday 27th May) was the Brussels 20k. I've run this 3 years in succession and each year I've run it faster - I am 7 minutes faster than I was last year.

I am once again stunned and amazed.

There was a huge number of participants this year - 30,000 and as a result the course was continuously crowded and it was very difficult to get a good long striding pace going. For the first time there was a time check at the 10km mark, so I've got a split time of 54 minutes for the first 10km and just under 51 minutes for the second - not bad, especially considering 2km of the last 10km is up hill.

The new technology has allowed a film to be published - see if you can see me at the 10km mark (on the left, gauche) after about 30 seconds and at the end of the race after about 10 seconds by clicking on www.runnersweb.nl/runnerstv

There is also a couple of photos of me this year on www.interfot-sports.be but you have to know my race number was 6802 to see them. When they get around to selling the downloadable image I will post them for all to see. By the way, my running mate Eric B is on the left of the first picture.

The event was not without its problems this year. A lot of people fell because of the crowding and when I reached the finish there was a crowd just over the line. Twenty minutes later the crowding got so bad that it took some runners 5 minutes from arriving within 100 metres of the line to actually cross it. This seems to have been caused by two things. Firstly they were handing out the medals just 5 metres over the line and secondly a lot of people stopped and started taking the chips off their shoes just the other side of the line.

Despite all that I had a great time and it was made even better by the Brussels Manneke Piss Hash House Harriers (BMPH3) party after the event where we celebrated the efforts of all our runners (16 of us) in traditional style with masses of beer, wine and pasta.

If you want to know any more about the "20km de Bruxelles" then have a look at the official website www.20kmdebruxelles.be/20km

Smoking

I am going to let off a little steam and a lot of smoke about smoking.

I have always hated smoking. I can remember at an early age putting my fingers in an ashtray and then being upset by the terrible smell sticking to my fingers. I guess I was a born non-smoker. In my family my father didn't smoke, and one of my brothers didn't smoke, but all the rest, i.e. my mother, two sisters and one brother and assorted brothers and sisters-in-law and even my wife have blown smoke over me for the whole of my life. I hated the smell and it it makes me sneeze, but now I have a bigger reason to hate smoking - what it does to its victims, and one victim in particular, my mother.

We all know smoking causes cancer, and not surprisingly this worries smokers. It worries my mother so much that she needs a cigarette to calm herself down whenever she thinks about it - but people tend to forget about the other things this evil weed does, and my mother, an nicotine addict for over 60 years is a (just) living example.

OK, my mother is 86 years old, so she's had a "good innings" and she smokes about 40 to 60 cigarettes a day - "a game old bird" one would say. You could say she is the proof that smoking doesn't kill but...

My mother has emphysema and has had it for about 8 years. Her lungs have become leathery and don’t absorb oxygen as they should. She gets breathless walking a few paces and has been unable for the last 6 years to manage the 250 metre walk to the local shops because there is a slight incline on the way. She always puffs and pants and had difficulty catching her breath. When she stands next to me as I work in her garden or do her paperwork she puffs as if she had just run to catch a bus. She isn’t receiving any treatment for emphysema – the NHS has understandably decided not to offer treatment to smokers as it is a waste of money. She has been told that smoking has done this to her.

My mother has a terrible cough. She will cough “fit to bust” and I often wonder when talking to her on the phone if I am listening to her coughing her last. When I ask her what she does to relieve the cough she tells me that a cigarette helps.

My mother has Age Related Macular Degeneration – the blood vessels in her retina have distorted and ruptured leaving a black hole wherever she looks. She can no longer read or even see the birds or flowers in her garden and is now officially blind having had near perfect eyesight until about 5 years ago. As the name suggests Age Related Macular Degeneration is something that happens to old people, BUT it is made worse by smoking and is even believed to be directly caused by smoking in some cases. She has been told that smoking has done this to her.

My mother has had ulcers on her legs for the last 4 years. They started because of a skin tumour (not smoking related) but when the tumour was removed the wound took an age to heal – and in the mean time strange dark patches started forming on her shins. As soon the ulcer on one leg healed another formed on the other leg and she has had that one for at least 2 years. The skin on her legs became hard and leathery and the dark patches spread. She has been told that smoking has done this to her.

My mother noticed her toes were getting darker and the skin in her calves courser and leathery and she got pains in her feet and calves. Eventually, earlier this year she went to the doctor who eventually took the whole thing seriously and referred her to a specialist.

She has seen the specialist consultant once and he said things like Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) and Chronic Venous Insufficiency (CVI). She has been told that smoking has done this to her.

She has been for a Doppler scan on her legs to check the blood flow. She is due to go back for her results in the middle of next month (June 2007).

I went to see my mother last weekend... I knew she had been unwell. I thought she had had a cold, but when I saw her I was shocked. She looked as if she had stood in a bath full of boiling water. Both legs were scarlet and swollen. Her feet were like balloons and her toes were black. The swelling went up her legs to her thighs and her knees looked like a prop forward’s. I wanted to take her to casualty there and then, but she refused.

With the help of my sister and one of my nieces’ we got the doctor to come and see her on Monday. He started saying things like “Critical Limb Ischemia” and gangrene. She has been told that smoking has done this to her.

Since then my mother has seen another doctor who has made similar diagnosis and thrown in thrombosis for good measure.

The ‘cure’ for “Critical Limb Ischemia”? Well there are two ways of curing it

1. Give up smoking and get oxygen and perhaps a arterial bypass operation, or alternatively, if she doesn't give up
2. Amputation – both legs.

She has been told that smoking has done this to her.

My mother has been prescribed some nicotine patches to help her give up and she got them yesterday afternoon. I phoned her last night to ask her if she had started using them. “No, I will start tomorrow morning” was the reply.

If you had been told the only way you were going to save your legs was to slap on a patch, would you wait until the next morning?

If you want to find out more about the revolting things smoking has done to my mother have a look at these links. Warning – if you smoke you may find this mildly worrying, if you have been bothered to read this far – if you don’t smoke you probably will feel very ill!

Emphysema

www.nhsdirect.nhs.uk

www.lungUSA.org

www.mayoclinic.com/health/emphysema/SECTION=2

www.mayoclinic.com/health/emphysema/SECTION=3

www.mayoclinic.com/health/emphysema/SECTION=4

www.mayoclinic.com/health/emphysema/SECTION=8

Age Related Macular Degeneration

www.stlukeseye.com/Conditions/MacularDegeneration

www.rnib.org.uk

PAD - Peripheral Arterial Disease

www.americanheart.org

www.patient.co.uk

CVI - Chronic Venous Insufficiency

www.vascularweb.org/Chronic_Venous_Insufficiency.html

aje.oxfordjournals.org

www.emedicine.com/med/topic2760.htm

Critical Limb Ischemia

www.aafp.org

www.woundcarecenter.net/193cases.pdf (warning big file)

www.vascularweb.org/Leg_Artery_Disease

Smoking kills

We all know that – but can do it so slowly and terribly.

What is almost worse is the masochistic response nicotine provokes: when faced with these facts the addict's reaction is not to stop and prevent these horrible ways of dieing (or a living death) but to indulge in more of this terrible drug.

Passports

I thought I would tell you about my experiences with my passport renewal.

Being a globe trotter I've filled several passports. We need to go back to 1993 to start this story. I had filled my old blue hardback passport within a short time of arriving in Malaysia and so went along to the British High Commission and got a new red one - "linked" to my existing one which still had a year or two's validity and some valid visas.

A few years later in 1997 after many trips to Indonesia whose visa requires 2 empty pages in the passport per visit I was in Singapore and I realised that I could only make one more trip to Indonesia with my exisiting red passport.

"No problem" they said at the consulate office, "We will link a new passport to you existing one"

"But this one is linked to another one and that one is in the UK and expired" I replied

"Ah..."

"Ah in deed!" I said wondering if I would ever get back to Indonesia where I was working at the time.

"No problem - we will give you a new unlinked passport"

Wow - I didn't know that anyone apart from James Bond had more than one passport. In 2 days and after a nominal fee I was the proud owner of 2 British passports! Nice for getting visas and the like, but a bit embarassing at immegration when leaving a country and presenting the wrong one. I had a several "Where visa?" and "Why you got 2 passport?" momentswhen I got it wrong and presented the wrong passport and then the right one...

Eventually the 'KL' passport expired and I continued using my now almost full and very dog-eared 'Singapore' passport without any problems until early this year when an immegration official in Brussels Eurostar pointed out that my passport was falling apart (the plastic over the photo was comming off) and was within a few months of expiring "I should get a new one if I were you" he said. Good point - but I would have to do that in Belgium rather than England because this is where I am working now.

So I started getting things together and trying to work out the logistics of the passport application - I wanted to spend Easter in England, so it couldn't be done before then as I had to allow, according to the Belgian Embassy web site, 4 weeks for the passport to be processed. Strangely enough during that time I could in theory travel to other "Schengan" countries (most of the EU) without a passport, but I couldn't go back to Blighty without one.

I finally got around to getting the passport photos (too grizzly to show on the web) and asked my landlord Jim to sign them (he is a professor, and they are on the list of people who can attest to one's likeness).

I got the application form off the web.

I even found my old blue passport...

But I couldn't find the 'KL' passport anywhere. I turned over my study in England over Easter and the whole apartment in Brussels afterwards - I thought I had taken it out to Brussels sometime ago but there was no sign of it anywhere...

A problem, and one that I had eventually to face. I decided initially to ignore the old passports and just hand in my 'Singapore' passport for renewal...but things didn't turn out that simple... let me take you through the process...

10th April

I finally finished filling application in the form and was about to sign it when I saw in signing it I was confirming "I have not held a passport of any description other than that stated above" - so I realised I couldn't possibly 'forget' about the missing passport. BLAST - why am I so honest?

11th April

I phoned the British Embassy in Brussels and had to leave a message explaining my problem. They phoned me back at lunchtime and told me I had to get a police report - despite the fact I don't know where the passport was lost. To do that I had to have the passport number and issue date - I have the number but not the date - "No problem" was the reply - come to the embassy and we will look it up on our database.

So at 3:30pm I presented myself at the embassy. After waiting an hour in a very small and initially very crowded room I finally got to speak to the very helpful girl manning the passport renewal desk. I explained my problem and she took my details and went to look up the KL passport.

She came back 10 minutes later "Your missing passport is so old it isn't on our database"

DAMN I could have lied and forgotten about it after all

"Now what?" I asked.

"We have to contact Kuala Lumpur to get the details. It could take a day or two. We will phone you".

"Once you have got the issue date you can go to a police station with this form, the LS01 and get a police report. Once you've got that I can put the police report number on the LS01 and you can put the LS01 number on the application form "

"Can I have the LS01 form now to save queuing?" I asked hopefully

"No. I need to put the date and time I issue the LS01 on the form"

The only good news is that they were quoting a 2 week turnaround time to process the passport application once I can submit it.

16th April

I finally got a message that the British High Commission in KL had found my passport details - so I've got to go back to the Brussels British Embassy and queue for an hour again and get the LS01 form then go to the police station and queue and get (eventually) a police report.... then go back to the embassy and queue and hand in my application form and passport and police report LS01 etc and then wait 2 weeks and then go back and collect the passport - hopefully without having to queue.

17th April

On the passport front everything is ready - I was pleasantly surprised yesterday that I didn't have to queue at the Embassy and got the LS01 form immediately as there was no one else waiting.

I took it to the nearest police station (lurking in the bushes in the Royal Park a few hundred metres from the Embassy) as recommended as this police station "knew the ropes" and were unlikely to ask any complicated questions.

Sure enough I got a police report in about 30 minutes without any cross questioning of any kind, but it was then too late to go back to the Embassy, so I must return tomorrow...

18th April

My passport application has finally been lodged with the Britsh Embassy and I will have a brand new shiny microchipped passport on 2nd May.

It cost a whacking €220 for the privilege of buying one of these 'biometric' passports - and as you are not allowed to buy a passport without the chip in it now there was nothing for it but lumping it.

This stage wasn't without its problems though.

First of all I went down before lunch and the place was packed - I waited nearly an hour and then just before I was to be served I double checked the papers to discover I had left the photos behind! BUGGER!

Nothing for it but to go back to the office and find them on my desk where I had left them.

I returned in the late afternoon and there was only one person in front of me. Strangely enough she took about 30 minutes to be finished (and she was submitting an LS01 too).

Finally it was my go. But there was still some drama. I had not filled in the form with details of my father's inside leg measurement and other details - why this is necessary when he is dead and I already have a passport is beyond me (the joys of being born abroad).

Then I handed over all the remaining paperwork: photos, police reports, duplicate LS01, original LS01, my photos and my really old blue passport.

When she saw that the girl said "What's this?"

I explained its role in the genealogy of my passports and she said "Oh no, if you had told me you had got this we could have saved a lot of time" .

Then she opened the passport, turned a few pages and showed me that it had details of the missing passport written into it as it was linked to the other one.

So the delay caused by getting the informaton from KL was totally unneccessary as I had all the information all along! DAMN!

2nd May Passport collection day!

Only a small hiccup this time...

Passports are collected from the Embassy front desk, so in theory no queuing. I went to the front desk and sure enough there was only one person in front of me, a man collecting his wife's and childs passports. He was fairly quick and was done in about 2 minutes.

When it came to my turn of course things didn't run so smoothly - my passport wasn't in the box waiting for collection. After a couple minutes of searching and a hasty phonecall I was told to wait 5 minutes. After 15 minutes my passport did finally appear - with all the details correct.

HORRAY!

but I wonder where my KL passport is...