It is currently simultaneously extremely busy and suspiciously quiet in our capital city. This week, a peloton of runners with an international flavour will be crossing the Brussels Capital Region?virtually. Between 28th September and this Sunday 4th October, you can run the postponed Brussels Airport Marathon yourself, from your own front door! The revolutionary MyTrace-app offers you a real event experience: from your start in a specific wave to a virtual speaker who gives you split times, position and other information.
For this first virtual Brussels Airport Marathon you can choose from 3 distances: 10km, 21km or 42.195km. You can run it wherever you like: from your front door, along your favourite training course or wherever. You start in one of the available waves. Plenty of other participants will be starting at the same time. You may not be able to see them, but the speaker in your ear pods will be telling you what position you’re in, what your split times are and which building you are passing by virtually.
INTERNATIONAL RANGE OF PARTICIPANTS
The Brussels Airport Marathon & Half Marathon have traditionally found a wide international response. One third of all runners do not live in Belgium. Participants from no fewer than 105 countries appeared at the start of the previous edition. The event is living up to its name as an ‘international marathon’ virtually too this year. For example, this week Brussels has already been visited virtually by runners who were in France, Germany, Switzerland, Hungary, Hong Kong, Belarus and New Zealand among other countries at the time of their participation.
One of them is Toby Beaglehole from New Zealand. In 2013, he ran the Brussels Half Marathon and grabbed the unique opportunity to participate in the event again this year. Only this time, he will be running it from his front door in Wellington, New Zealand. “6 degrees, pitch black and gale force northerlies here in New Zealand, but I really enjoyed the commentary, I kept imagining the course and the experience kept me smiling!” says an upbeat Toby Beaglehole.
Large numbers will continue to run virtually through the Brussels Capital Region this weekend.
“The Brussels marathon will be a virtual event out of necessity this year”, says Sven Gatz, Minister for Finance, Budget and Image of Brussels in the Brussels Capital Region Government. “Images of Brussels are used to give the runners the impression that they are running against the wonderful backdrop of our city. The organisers are making a fabulous contribution to the promotion of the Brussels Capital Region with this innovative approach, and its entirely corona proof!”
REVOLUTIONARY EVENT APP MYTRACE
Wherever or whenever you run your challenge, the new and revolutionary event app MyTrace gives every participant a real-life event experience. You choose your own start wave and along your route you will get lots of information that will make you feel like you are really in a race. Afterwards, you can easily share your result, photos and virtual medal on your social media channels via the app.
For those looking to get the full experience, they can add the Brussels Airport Marathon & Half Marathon T-shirt and a real medal to their order when they register.
You can sign up on www.brusselsairportmarathon.com and registration is open until Saturday 3rd October.
