Week 33 of 2026: eclipse

This week there was a solar eclipse in Europe. I also went on a boat with coworkers for "the most amazing barbecue you will ever have", dixit the 20 year old guy who was 45 minutes late because he had a housewarming party last night (sorry, it was not, but the boat was nice). Also visited my dad and ran the longest run I ever ran (again).

Read

• continued The Obelisk Gate by N.K. Jemisin (The Broken Earth 2)

Maybe I should stop praising this book, but as returning readers might know: I really like it, and it keeps being very good.

Played

An easy week this time. I played only Yazeba's Bed & Breakfast on Tuesday. We played with four players: after last weeks seven I decided that it would be good to limit the seats for it for a few weeks. The game does hold up, but you would do the game a disservice to only run it on such large tables. We first played The Witch's Missing Shadow with Yazeba, Amelie, The Moon Prince and Mr. Boggs, and then we had time left for me to switch to Sal and play Sal Has Written A Play, with Yazeba, Amelie and Moon Prince returning.

Ran

On Monday, I did 10.6km with tempo-intervals through the Bijlmer. There was a dad on a bike who was impressed by how fast I went (4:10/km) and I thought: this weekend I went faster (4:00/km), but I just thanked him.

On Wednesday, I did a 12.1km easy run towards the park near Amstel station. There, and on the Weespertrekvaart towards it, a lot of people gathered for the (partial) solar eclipse. I did not have the special glasses – I didn't really trust the last minute webshop stuff – so I just didn't look at the sun directly and only observed the light, the people and the shadows. It was still magical: right after the high point I started running again and found beautiful spots where the shadows of the leaves of the trees were forming nice crescent moons. That's what I like about running on moments like these: you experience the eclipse on so many more different places at once. A run well spend.

On Friday I did 7k easy, which was actually hard. It was strange how that worked, but I was determined to keep my heart rate low, and I know the feeling of fatigue that comes with zone 3 now very well. It was weirdly difficult to keep it easy? Good training though!

On Sunday, I ran 26.8km: again my longest run ever. This time I went to Station Noord and ran through the polders to Zuiderwoude and Uitdam, and then back on the dike next to the Markermeer. It was beautiful and not too warm and it went very very well. It only became harder after the half marathon mark, which is I think a good sign the training is paying off.