After his first Marathon, Roland wanted to push his time to below 4 hours. So he thought it might be a good idea to do this in one of the flattest countries in the world – the Netherlands. Therefore the decision was taken to choose Amsterdam as the venue for this try.
When going there we decided also to combine it with some sightseeing.
On Friday Roland did a last very easy test run in and around the Vondelpark, knowing he would need to run there on Sunday as well. It is a really nice little park which also corrected a bit of Roland’s view of Amsterdam as it was not only flat but did de/increase depending of the direction you’d run. For the Marathon it meant an increase at the end of the race…
After we finished working we started with a little sightseeing tour around Amsterdam and picked up the race bib for Sunday.
We ended the day with a nice Japanese dinner and a long evening at the best Cocktail bar in town – Door 74. We met a really nice couple there and so the evening ended around 4 a.m. with far to many drinks considering that the race day was around the corner…
The next day we got up for a Brunch with friends still suffering from the night before… It was really great to meet up with Jeroen and Mirjam and talk about their time in Norway and how they did after they got back to Amsterdam.
After the brunch we decided to walk a bit around to get up to speed again – which only worked out a little bit…
After an early lunch we went to bed early to get ready for the run the day after. The route was fantastic and the crowd along the route was cheering and helped a lot. Not to mention the support from Kathy that helped Roland to survive the 42.1 k – which by the way were actually almost 43. Roland did quite good in the beginning and started of well but then two things made him suffer quite a bit: 1) the bar tour was still not completely out of his system and 2) he had too warm clothes for the nice weather conditions on race day. But in the end he defeated all of that and crossed the finish line with sort of a smile 😉
After the race we just went back to the hotel for a shower and took the next plane back to Oslo. However, Amsterdam was really worth the travel and we will definitely come back.
