The FKT for ‘Streek-GR Mol om is a route me and some of my friends were talking about for some time. Most of us live here or live closeby.
As I was recovering physically and more so mentally from my DNF at the great escape 200 two weeks before, I felt quite good the last few days and wanted to use my physical condition I built up for the GE200. So that’s why I decided today was the day to attack the FKT for this GR.
The start did not go as planned. I started at Vita Den Uyt and there was a detour right at the beginning because of an overflow of the ‘Oude nete’ . So I followed the markings of the detour instead of getting wet feet in the first K of a long adventure. After 2km I lost track of the markings and decided to check my navigation to get back on track. But because of my poor navigation skills I accidentally came back to the start at Vita Den Uyt, I guess this was my warm-up and so I started over.
The first part from Vita Den Uyt has a lot of tarmac and gravel, good for the pace - I was running at around 4:50-4:55 min/km at the beginning and this felt very good. I did not do any research regarding the gpx in advance, but I noticed pretty early that the route would have a lot of long straight roads. Sometimes, especially in the second part of the route at ‘het Zilvermeer or after ‘Herberg het Wilde zwijn’ at the border of the Netherlands, there were some single tracks that was a nice variation.
As I was running everything felt okay until kilometer 70, at a pace of +- 4:50 min/km without any muscle soreness. But at 70K I felt pressure on my lungs and started focussing on breathing, which felt a bit better. I dropped my pace to 5:15 min/km to try and get a better feeling again. But as the kilometers went by, I noticed my heartrate was elevated, normally at this pace I have 120-130 bpm but it was at 160-165, so in the beginning I was questioning my watch. So I rechecked a couple of times but it stayed the same, I walked a bit and it dropped so I had the feeling my watch was right. I dropped my pace even further and was almost at the finishline. When I was back at my car, I felt that my chest was heavy and I had some stiffness in my left arm, which is a sign of a heart problem. Luckily after a couple of minutes my heartrate was stable again and I started to feel better again. Later in the evening I did some research of my data and noticed my heart rate was elevated from kilometer 40 without noticing. So make sure, that if a higher than normal heartrate, heavy breathing, sore chest, stiff arm and generally not feeling good it is a good thing to stop and get a medical check-up asap.
The next day I had an appointment with the general practitioner, who sent me to the cardiologist to check if something was wrong. Blood results, an echo-imaging, a bike exercise test with ECG showed everything was normal. Probably the reason this occurred was due to an underlying viral infection (now or in the weeks before) or in combination with minor dehydration (only drank 2 liters in this whole time) and excercising.
These were some scary days, but after 2 weeks of rest I can slowly start to continue my journey.