Europeana at CPC Loop Den Haag

Since May 2013 Europeana has a running club and today we celebrated the first outcome / highlight of this club: six Europeana staff participated in the 5km race of the City-Pier-City Loop (CPC) in The Hague. This is the largest running event in The Hague and the start of the spring season – which this year was acknowledged by the weather as well. Sunny, blue sky, almost no wind – it could not have been any better for part two of my sports weekend (see further below). I made Europeana shirts for the six of us, so we can promote Europeana while running The Hague. It was also very helpful to find the teammates back again in this huge crowd of runners – very easy to get lost otherwise. We managed to end up just a few meteres behind the starting line, which was great, so not much effort to get into a good running speed. Therefore, the first kilometer was great for me, really good time. Looking at my intermediates it seems that I was maybe a bit to overwhelmed by this start and slowed down on the following kilometer, not on purpose, but afterwards it was impossible to get the time back. The 5km run actually is not reaching the pier in Scheveningen and after passing the Vredespaleis and Scheveningse Bosje we turned back to Malieveld. The final kilometer was very hard and I finished in 23:28 – slower than the 5km split time during the 10km Vredesloop last September. Well, the year has just started and its good to leave some room for improvement.

Behind the finish line we tried to bring together all Europeana starters, which was not easy. I found Harry and Pavel quite easily. They finished in 25:41 and 24:42 respectively. Nienke followed soon afterwards, very happy with her 28:37. Monique unfortunately was stopped by an injury and had to walk back to the finish, really a pity as she trained really hard the last weeks and was in good shape. Only Patty was lost, she was looking for us, we were looking for her, couldn’t find us. Finally we met Patty at the Central Station, where also my family was waiting.

Conclusion: I’m very happy about this outcome of the running club. For most of the Europeana starters it was the first official run ever, very exciting. As a group we finished the run on average better than the majority of the CPC participants, which also is a great success. Although the final results given by the organisers are misleading: the place of an individual is based on the time since the official start, not the individual race time. I found two persons in the results list next to each other, but one finished 36 seconds earlier – according to the individual time – does not make a lot of sense. Anyway, I hope we can continue the Europeana running club and come back next year to the CPC to run into spring – allez culture.

Six Europeana's behind the fence, waiting to be released into The Hague - no way back...

Only a few metres to go, a lot harder than expected...
(by courtesy of Willem Driebergen)

Harry is looking a lot happier approaching the finish line, excellent performance.
(by courtesy of Willem Driebergen)

Nienke is looking even happier, a few metres before the finish line, really great.
(by courtesy of Willem Driebergen)

Gold medals are very important, Julia likes it a lot.(by courtesy of Willem Driebergen)