Kevin Runs Europe: Day 10

Distance: 17.3 miles (27.8 km)

Today was a great day, probably the best yet.

We got up to go to mass at the cathedral at 11, but naturally didn't get up quite in time to make it there, so we stopped at a much closer, smaller church - St. Michael's - the same name as our home church in Albion, Nebraska! I was very impressed with the whole thing. The choir, made up entirely of 60+ year olds (same as the congregation mostly) was really good. They sang old traditional Dutch hymns in perfect harmony and were accompanied by a very good organist. The priest was a young, dynamic speaker who's sermon held my attention even though I couldn't understand it because it was in Dutch. Surprisingly though, I was able to understand about 10% of the words he spoke and about 60% of the words on our hymn/liturgy read-along sheet. This is probably because Dutch is kind of a mix of German and English - but mostly German. Both English and Dutch are descendants of Low German dialects, which was the counterpart to High German, of which Modern German is a descendant. Anyway, I understood just enough to sing along, maybe with terrible pronunciation, but I don't think anyone noticed.

If you're ever in Brugge, rent bikes. It was probably our best decision of the trip so far. My legs were getting quite tired of walking, and I needed them to be fresh for the long run I was planning in the afternoon. Before my run, we first biked to the edge of the old city walls (which now are gone, but the canal circling them and the city gates are still there). I began my run along the perfectly straight canal with tree lined bike paths on either side, running to the picture-perfect village of Damme. Curtis biked ahead, visiting a bunch of other villages in the area too. When I got to Damme, I climbed up into the old windmill and ascended the long spiral staircase to the top of the church belfry, where I had panoramic views of the perfectly flat but incredibly picturesque north Belgian countryside. From Damme, I continued on to Oosterkerk, an even smaller village with another old windmill and church. When I went up to the windmill in Oosterkerk, an old man came around from the other side and said something in Dutch. I asked if he spoke English, and he replied, "Do you have your biceps?" as he pointed to his upper arms. Confused for a brief second, I then saw he was starting to turn a crank and wanted me to help. So I said, "of course!" and I gave the mightiest push I could muster on the board used to switch the direction of the windmill while he turned the crank. After a minute, the windmill was facing the direction he wanted it to face. He then said thanks, I said goodbye, and I was off running again. That's the first and likely the only time I will ever help turn a Belgian windmill in the middle of a run.

After getting back to Bruges, I was pretty tired and my legs were starting to ache. There was a bit of a pain above my left heel that hurt when I walked. I realized that, even though I havent' been running more than I usually do, I've been walking and standing infinitely more! We probably average 4-5 miles a day walking, and by the end of this day, I had also biked about 6 miles. To be honest, I may have to cheat and start factoring some of this in to my daily mileage total, or my legs will fall off. I'm thinking of counting half-distance for walking and 1/4 for biking. Anyway, I actually ran just over 15 miles today, but we'll call it just over 17.