Three and a Half Hours Done, Another Hour (???) To Go....

I know I run the risk of becoming a bit of a running bore, but bear with me for another three weeks until the Marathon obsession phase ends. In the meantime I'm going to keep writing about it. It's hard not to, as I seem to be spending more and more hours every week getting ready for the 21st October.

This week I made a couple of personal breakthroughs... firstly on Wednesday by running 5km faster than I've ever done before during a morning training session in the Westerpark and then today in the Amsterdamse Bos by running the furthest(and longest) that I have ever managed before. It's so rewarding to realise that all the hard work is showing itself, especially as my new i-pod chip has a great little gimmick that means that either Paula Radcliffe or Lans Armstrong congratulate you direct into your ears when you do so! I realised today that the movement sensor is callibrated all wrong, so the graphs below aren't 100% accurate, but at least it gives me some idea of what I've been doing:





I was completely wiped out after the run today. It was pretty cold and poured with rain, so by the time we got to the end point I had pools of water in my shoes, was covered in mud and was fantasising about large slices of cake and warm baths. Luckily Elise 'guardian angel of runners' Samperez collected us and walked our little limping group to her place for hot showers and big servings of homemade lasagne. Never before has lasagne been so appreciated (or disappeared so quickly). The picture below (thanks to Jakob and his high-tech Sat Nav toy) shows the funny tangled-up route that we ran. I'm glad that the good people at Phanos were navigating and not me!

Dam tot Dam Race 2007

After all the hard work and preparation that leads up to the Dam tot Dam race (an annual 1o mile/16km road race between Amsterdam and Zaandam), I'm happy to say that it was a really successful day yesterday. The sun shone, the skies were blue, everyone was going around with big smiles on their faces, and no one collapsed of heat exhaustion. Phew. Every year the task of organising the work team gets bigger, with more and more runners getting the bug. This year I had 100 runners and 15 crew to look after, both at the start line and at the post-race hospitality in Zaandam. Here I am with Elise and Elisa, just before we left for the start line. Cheesy grins all round.

I ran a tough race this time, and my lungs were fit to burst by the time I reached the finish line, but I did what I set out to do, which was to (finally, after 4 years of trying) break the 1 hr 30 barrier.... and I did it by the skin of my teeth (1hr, 29mins, 44 seconds!). That's around 4 mins faster than last year.


The rest of the team seemed happy with their results too, but even happier once they got their post-race massage and a couple of cans of cold beer!

Lots of photos of the day online here. Also funny videos of me looking knackered at various points during the race here.

28km down, 14km to go....

As the Amsterdam marathon looms nearer (just five weeks to go now) the training runs are getting longer and longer. I'm now in the habit of getting up early on Sunday mornings to slog it out around various routes for an increasing amount of hours. I can't walk down stairs without saying 'ow, ow, ow' out loud every Monday morning, but it feels great to be breaking a personal record every week, and still to be standing after three hours on the road! I guess that running is good for the soul, if not for the knees.

I run with a little training team of colleagues (Gavin, Elisa and Jakob) which is really motivating and makes those Sunday runs much more enjoyable. We've been getting creative with our routes and finding places in and around Amsterdam we've never been to before. Today the team were treated to 'Lucy's Four Park Special', all planned in advance on Google Earth (what DID we do before the internet?) involving loops of Westerpark, Vondelpark, Rembrantpark and Erasmus Park. The graph above is due to my new shoe chip, that connects with my i-pod, allowing me to upload the data from each run to a website which tracks my progress. It's all very 21st century... all I need now is bionic knees and there'll be nothing stopping me.

Pimp my bike

I got to Centraal Station on Thursday night after work and went to collect my bike, which I'd left locked in its usual spot (amongst the other billion bikes) and realised that someone had nicked the front wheel. There is nothing unusual about this, as it's a well-known fact that the junkies help themselves to bikes (or parts of bikes) on a daily basis round there to sell on the street. However, I was really annoyed because I had to drag it home 2 miles or so. Dragging a one-wheeled bike is not an experience I would recommend. Not only was it extremely heavy, but the world and its dog seemed to think it was okay to comment/laugh/inform me that I'd lost something/offer to nick a wheel off someone else's bike on my behalf, etc, etc.

Instead I carried on dragging until I finally reached my local bike repair store, where it remained locked to a lamppost until the next morning (when I could get a second hand wheel fitted). They only had one wheel available, so now I have a black bike with a white tyre, which looks a bit strange. This just added to the fact that my poor old oma fiets (grandmother bike) really has seen better days. I bought it from new around 3 years ago - it looked so sweet and shiny with a giant silk sunflower tied to the handlebars. Now it's covered in rust, someone nicked the sunflower, the dynamo lights stopped working, I lost the mudguard and bent my pedal. Despite all this I'm stupidly attached to the thing, and have been known to pat it on the saddle every now and again as if it were a dog. I'm just happy that the junkies took the wheel and left me the bike... it's usually the other way round.

Chips on the Strip with the Brits

Okay, so this isn't strictly speaking an Amsterdam Adventure, but it's hard to seek adventures in Amsterdam when you happen to be staying in the Algarve for the whole week. I nevertheless promised a weekly update, so I'm shifting the focus to Portugal for this entry.



Me and my friend Elise have had a great week sunning ourselves on sandy shores and return to Holland feeling nicely relaxed (and a bit chilly). I must admit, when we first arrived I was shocked by the resort (Albufeira) which had to be seen to be believed. Our apartment was slap-bang on 'The Strip' which proudly displayed its neon signs, strip clubs, theme bars, fish and chip shops, Irish pubs, football bars showing Sky TV, and hoards of Brits who seemed dedicated to the job of exposing rolls of white flab. We vowed never again to book a holiday on the internet late at night after we'd downed a couple of bottles of wine. As we lay in our beds at 4am on our first night there, listening to the pounding house music coming from the bars outside and the drunk Dutch boys upstairs shouting and slamming doors, we thought that things couldn't get much worse... until it started to rain.

The next morning we all sat around dejectedly at the 'welcome meeting' sipping our complimentary orange squash (no expense spared there) and trying to look interested as our enthusiastic Dutch rep attempted to sell us excursions. Not an easy thing to do with the rain hammering down on the awning. Fan-bloody-tastic.

Luckily, that afternoon the sun appeared and it was blue skies all the way from there on. We discovered that the 'Old Town' was much nicer and easily accessible by 'fun train' (an entertainment in itself) so we made daily trips there, grabbing our favourite spot on the sandy beach and chilling out with books and i-pods. I got to take regular dips in the ocean (which always makes me a very happy girl indeed) and became a dab-hand at beach tennis. Once we discovered that we could buy mint-choc-chip icecream we suddenly forgot all about our initial concerns and decided that the Algarve was pretty cool after all. Why the Dutch never discovered mint-choc-chip is one of life's little disappointments for me. By the way, the 'noisy Dutch Boys upstairs' left midweek which gave us welcome relief from the 4am 'klompen feestjes' (clog parties... or at least this is what it sounded like).

Away from the Strip we found some great restaurants which provided some mouth-watering seafood (can't get enough of the stuff) all served by lovely friendly people. My marathon training didn't suffer either (but my calves did with all those hills!).

By the end of the week we were laughing about 'The Strip' and had fun making some photo projects there. If you can't beat them, join them...