Week 13 of 2026: Venloop

Main event of the week was the Venloop half marathon, see the “Ran” section. But I also played and read some.

Played

On Tuesday, I ran Brindlewood Bay, “A Throng of Vice and Liars”, which is a mystery around a book-signing session of a fantasy author (A Rime of Earth and Ember) who just can’t finish the sixth book of the series, but who gets a lot of attention now that there is a television series called “A Tome of Bones” based on his work. It was a lot of fun.

On Wednesday, I played Brindlewood Bay. My fortnightly games of Brindlewood Bay have been in sync with those of Lianne in Utrecht since the very start: when I ran Dad Overboard, the beginner mystery, she ran it the next day, and when I ran All Hallow’s Scream, she ran it the day after, and so on. I would always go to her table or message her after to ask who was the killer at her table. For those unfamiliar with Brindlewood Bay: even the keeper / game master does not know the answer, the players make it up as they go and in the end a roll of the dice tells you if you are right. It means you can play it over and over again and it will always be a different story!

This week was the first time I deviated from that plan: next up in the book is Jinglebell Shock and I just don’t like Christmas enough to do it in March. But: this meant I had a mystery that I had not read before, and an opportunity to play! (Because I actually never did play as a player before.) It was interesting to see the thing from the other side, especially because every keeper has their own style. Unfortunately, we were not able to solve the murder in time (we were the last table running, had very little clues and also our Theorize roll failed). I am still a bit traumatized by this, actually. I guess it means I have to run it some day, to find who actually did commit the murder...

Read

• continued Closer by Dennis Cooper, in the train to Venlo.
• continued Lord of the Rings, The Fellowship of the Ring - J.R.R. Tolkien, a few pages in the train back from Venlo, mostly because I did not want to read a book about gay teens having weird sex in front of my coworkers.

Ran

• Monday: I did the 13km easy run that I was supposed to run last Sunday.
• Thursday: I ran my the last race pace intervals, 8.6km with 4 times 1km at 4:25/km within that.
• Sunday: Venloop halve marathon at 1:36:10 (PR)

This was the main event of this week: I ran a half marathon at Venloop in Venlo, the race I trained 16 weeks for. When I started Runna suggested I could get a time between 1:29:00 and 1:32:00, which would have been insane given the fact that my PR at that time was 1:46:19. The last couple of weeks I couldn’t really hit the pace targets anymore, so it was already adjusted to 1:32:00 to 1:35:00.

Unfortunately, on the day itself it didn’t really go as planned. Despite being at the right spot in the starting area, a lot of people in front of me started out with 5:00/km or slower. I just don’t know how you expect to run a half marathon in 1:30:00 if you start that slow. Battling myself a way through that in narrow streets with a lot of party, I could finally pick up the pace when we left the city centre, which I did.

My fastest kilometer was the seventh, which I did in 4:19 minutes. That was just a bit too fast, and I could not keep this up. After the half way point, I really struggled, also mentally because I had trained so hard, all my coworkers were watching and I felt like I had already failed. Running can be such a brutally mental sport.

My plan B was to keep going faster than 5:00 minutes per kilometer. This I could manage and kilometer 19 and 20 where slowest with both 4:51, which is still a very reasonable tempo. In the end, I finished with 1:36:10, which is not only a PR, it is taking more than 10 minutes off my previous PR in October at the Amsterdam Half Marathon. (I accidentally ran a time of 1:45:31 in Egmond in January – I was supposed to take it easy there – so I guess I took only a little more than 9 minutes off my PR, but hey, still.)

It is so weird to be not satisfied with this result. I am still struggling a bit with it. This is a crazy good result and taking 10 minutes of a PR is not easy at all, and will be increasingly harder the faster you want to be. I’m still trying to savor it, I hope it gets better after a bit of rest. I am very tired.