NSK Combined Events was a huge success! 22 women and 28 men competed in the combined events. Together with the separate events, in total there were 111 participants! 7 student athletics associations from all over the Netherlands travelled to Eindhoven for a fun week of athletics. By far most participants were from DAV Kronos.
On Saturday the 23rd of October at 12:00, the men started with the first of 10 events: the 100m sprint. At this point it was still misty and cold. The women started at 1pm with 100m hurdles. Our Asterix participant (and candidate chairman) Justine managed to easily jump over the hurdles more than half her height and became second!
The sun started to come out for the rest of the events. The women did high jump, shot put, and 200 meters. The men did long jump, shot put, high jump, and 400 meters. In between these NSK events, some athletes changed out of their jury outfit and into their racing kit to tackle a 1000m. All the grilled cheese toasties turned out to be good pre-race food.
At the end of the first day of NSK Combined Events, the Dutch Championships Beer chase took place. This is a beer relay race where in teams of 3 athletes, each team member runs 5 times 200m, drinking a beer after each 200m, which has to be finished before the next run. The boys of the 52nd board showed how well they practiced their beer drinking and running skills and took the win! They can call themselves Dutch champion Beerchase for the next year!
After the beer chase it was finally time for food! Vapiano made pasta for all participants and volunteers: carb loading for day two and full bellies ready to party.
We Gauls showed our fellow student athletes our favourite bar at Stratumseind: Kafée Kix. Here the carb loading in liquid form continued and integration points for the Zeus bokaal were obtained. Luckily the bars closed at 12: all athletes could have enough sleep for the next day!
Sunday the 24th of October: the second day of NSK Combined Events. This day started early. The committee had to be present at the track at 7am. The athletes started their first event at 10:00. Benefits of an early start: a breath-taking misty sunrise from our beautiful track.
The women competed in long jump, followed by a loooong break, then javelin throw and ended their heptathlon with an 800m.
The long break was not boring at all as they could watch the race walking! Fun to watch with a very suitable walking playlist (‘I’m walking on sunshineee’) in the nice hot autumn sun. Initially, 20 athletes signed up. After a quick tutorial on race walking by an experienced trainer, 6 more people decided to join. Harry van Ham (chairman of the NSK Combined Events) won the 1000m race walk in 6:52,10. An experienced race walker from DAK managed to walk 10.000m in under 50 minutes! That is faster than many people can run that distance.
After lunch, the one-hour run took place (not part of the Combined Events, although some athletes decided to participate anyways just for fun). In the one-hour run, as you might expect, you have to run 1 hour and see how far you get. This day 3 Dutch records were run!! Matthijs van den Broek ran a new U20 Dutch record: 15920 meters. Our current chairman Finn Timmermans dropped his running buddy Tom and managed to run 17201 meters in one hour, a new U23 Dutch record. Emma van Oijen ran 11954 meters, setting a new women U20 and U23 Dutch record. And besides all this, Casper van der Putten managed to get another Asterix club records with 18483 meters!
Back to combined events: Our (almost competitive) Asterix member Jim van Mook was the overall winner with 5514 points in total. Wessel van Nierop managed to end at a nice 14th place. At the award ceremony every male participant decided to take off their shirt, which was a bit random.
All in all, a sunny weekend filled with athletics, beer and fun.
By Carmen Reep
Photos by Lars van der Valk