Thanksgiving / Villers la Ville Race / getting ready for renovations / Grosse Messe

Last week, Malcolm told us that he was going to come home for the weekend, so late Friday afternoon I popped over to the Delhaize next door and picked up some food for our Thanksgiving dinner.

Here in Belgium they do raise turkeys for food, but whole turkeys are rarely available except around the USA Thanksgiving Day or at Christmastime.  Instead one can usually find whole turkey breasts or turkey legs year-round, and that is what I bought.  Two turkey legs are usually easy to cook in a circular or oval roasting pan, and as they are all dark meat there is no issue with some portions overcooking or drying out.

Pumpkin pies are not usually part of the Belgian diet, but fortunately there was a special on a variety of squash and pumpkin varieties, including some fantastic pie pumpins for around 2 EUR each.  I bought one on speculation, and peeled and cubed it.  Boiling in slightly salted water for twenty minutes softened it completely so that it could be pureed, and then when spiced and mixed with a can of sweetened condensed milk and a couple of eggs, one pumpkin served to make one pie.  Maggie used the shortening pie crust from Edna Staebler's Food that really schmecks cookbook, a present from Bruce many years ago, and really it turned out marvellously.  We rounded out the table with mustard green beans, and oven roasted parsnips and carrots.

Saturday we had an early start, with Lawrence, Jan and a number of other running friends starting the 30k at the Abbey of Villers-la-Ville at 9h30.  It was a cool day to run, which is nice; I generate a lot of heat when exercising and prefer cool days to hot ones.

at the start of the race in the Abbey
(Matthew with blue hat, Lawrence in green sleeves, and Eric in orange hat)

Our pace was a comfortable six minutes/kilometer, and all went well until the 15km mark when suddenly my right knee started to hurt.  It was that scary problem, tendonitis or "runner's knee", something that I've never felt in my right knee at all.  I had it a bit in the left knee last summer but this incidence came on very suddenly.  I decided to stop at the halfway mark, and wait for my friends at the finish.  It's not too terribly disappointing, as I ran 29km two weeks ago, but I was looking forward to bettering my time.  I'll have another chance at the end of the month when I run the 28km Foret de Soignes race, which is on my "home" terrain; with Lawrence I've run pretty much every bit of the trail at various times, in both directions, so it should hold no surprises.

worn out shoes

Why knee pain now?  I realise that my current shoes have clocked almost 1000 Km; usually it is recommended that one changes them every 300-500 miles, which translates to roughly every 500-800km.  Not only does the tread wear change the angle of the foot hitting the ground, but the shock absorption of the shoe progressively deteriorates with use, and the shape of the shoe also changes, so it's not surprising that I ran into trouble.  I have duck paddles for feet, and so I need quite wide shoes; the only ones that I've found that don't pinch are Nikes, and these aren't so easy to come by.  Jogging Plus in Ottignies didn't have them in stock, but I called the Brussels store near the Troon metro stop, and they will order them in for the end of this week, so I hope to get out for a break-in run on Saturday or Sunday.

Maggie's 5km run started at 11:00, and she made quite good time.  Clare ran a fast 17km, and our other friends also had successful races; Jan came in 5th in the 30km! Afterwards we regrouped at the Hammers for a nice rabbit stew and social time, and then on Sunday morning Maggie and Bryan and Kiana and I went to Tongres for some antiques shopping.  I have been looking for old marble that we can use underneath the incoming woodstove, and was hoping to find a large armoir with a marble counter top there that I might convert.  As well we were looking for wall sconces in a style that are more in keeping with the age of the house.  We did find a couple of inexpensive sconces but no luck on the marble.  I found some at a local marbrerie but it is quite expersive, and there is a delay of a couple weeks on the order.  I am going to the woodstove place on Friday to look at some "schistes", which I understand to be naturally striated plates of rock that may be suitable from a colour tone point of view to protect the floor, and retain some of the heat the stove generates.  We hope to have that installed before Maggie leaves for the October holiday.  Certainly it's needed; we finally fired up the gas furnace this weekend, and tested out all of the radiators to try to take the chill off the house.  Water radiators are fine but we can't wait for the direct heat from wood.

Maggie leaves on the last Saturday of October; she is going to visit with her parents at Skootamatta for that week, and we just received news that Duncan will also be going to Canada, but not to Skootamatta... he's meeting my parents and my nephew Henry in Montreal, and the four of them will fly down to Orlando, and spend the week visiting Walt Disney World, NASA, Legoland, and Universal Studios.  Lucky travellers!  I guess that Malcolm and I will be here together for the week; it coincides with a lot of work to get the roof replaced and insulated so I'm sure that we'll find something to do.

in rehearsal in the Sint-Geertruikerk in Leuven

This week I have been spending time reviewing the Grosse Messe für Bach und Luther in preparation for the concert tomorrow evening in Leuven.  We had our first rehearsal yesterday afternoon and evening in the church at the abbey in Leuven, and I was happy to see many familiar players in the orchestra, and familiar singers as well...  it will be an interesting project, and we will perform it again next week in Brussels.

Today I have to get to the commune house to pick up a permit for the refuse container that will be required to dispose of the old roof tiles, and then head off on the train to Leuven for our next rehearsal this evening...