20km of Brussels

Since years Deloitte is an established value at the 20km of Brussels. On Sunday 18 May some 100 colleagues from Deloitte gathered at the “Jubelpark/Parc du Cinquantenaire” to run 20 long kilometres with about 40.000 other sporty but crazy people.

Although it was a Sunday morning, we met at 8:15 with some Tax colleagues at the Deloitte offices in Diegem to ‘carpool’ to the start of the race. To be correct, we parked the car at the Woluwe shopping and then took the metro to the event. Once arrived on the site, we searched for the Deloitte-booth, where we received our running shirts, our race-number, some drinks and (healthy) snacks. Especially the drinks were much appreciated, as it was very sunny, and thus a warm day. Due to this excellent weather, measurements had to be taken, i.e. sun block flew richly.

Before the start of the run, Ronny Mosuse joined us at the Deloitte-booth to have a picture taken, as he is the ambassador of S.O.S. Children Villages, a charity actively supported by Deloitte.

At 10:00 am sharp, the kick-off for the first wave was given at the top of the “Jubelpark/Parc du Cinquantenaire”. A quite impressive moment with more than 40.000 participants and with encouraging music from Stromae, and off course… the Brabançonne. Somewhere amongst the crowd, King Filip and our very own CEO Rik Vanpeteghem were awaiting the launch of the race.

At 10:10 am it was up to our wave to start, all excited as we had all been training for some time to reach the finish, but even more important to run a decent time. The race led us through “Ter Kamerenbos/Bois de la Cambre”. Passing through the forest was very pleasant (at last a bit of shadow).

After 1:01:12 the first athlete finished. For most of the Deloitte-colleagues it took a bit longer to reach the finish. Despite the ”a-little-too-warm-to-run- day”, we all enjoyed every single minute of it (maybe I should speak for myself but I honestly did!). With the constant encouragement of the crowd along the 20km’s, all Deloitte colleagues made it to the finish. Luckily and very important on such a warm day, were the 5 water and energy drink stands during the run.

After the race we all gathered at the Deloitte-booth to celebrate our courage with some very refreshing drinks and snacks, read beers and hamburgers… Honestly we really deserved them!!

Congratulations to all Deloitte-participants who finished the race. It really was an impressive day. I don’t doubt that my colleagues and I will participate again next year.  We keep on training … still today!

Thanks all for the unusual but really impressive sunny Sunday!!