Week 42 of 2026: marathon

My main thing this week was the Amsterdam Marathon, so I have moved the 'Ran' section up this week to tell you all about it. The week leading up to it was mostly being nervous about it.

Ran

I skipped all my runs leading into the marathon, to maximize my recovery, so the marathon on Sunday was my first and only run. And what a run.

It started off a bit wet, as there was some light rain right before we got released, and the Olympic Station where I started does not have a roof in the middle part. As soon as we ran out of it, the rain had stopped though. The first part I ran close to someone dressed up as Mario and I tried to get away from "ohhh, it's Mario!", but he kept following me. I managed to get the half marathon in 1:42:58, which is my second fastest half marathon ever.

Soon after the halfway point, I noticed I had a problem. The pace I had was unmaintainable, not so much for my lungs and stamina, but for my legs. I allowed myself to slow down a bit, from 4:50/km to 5:00/km, but when I reached the 30km mark, I just had to walk. It was such a strange experience, to feel the limits of my body in such an unexpected way. They did warn me, but it is still different if you experience it yourself.

What nobody warned me about, is the absolutely enormous overwhelm of running a marathon that this popular. There were so many people everywhere, all shouting and screaming. I did appreciate their enthusiasm, but I must also admit there is a limit to how many times I can hear "kom op Sebastiaan, je kan het". After three hours of it, I was just spent, and I just wished we would turn a corner and be at a lovely trail through the fields, with nobody but us runners.

The second half took over two hours to complete, which is the slowest half marathon I ever did. I had to walk several times, and it was very painful, but I did finish. I knew several friends where out there, standing next to the parcours, waiting for me to pass, and that kept me going. I guess that was also unexpected: I have ran quite a few of these events now, but this was the most support I ever had. It was truly heartwarming, thank you all.

I ended with 3:51:16, which is still a pretty good time for a first marathon.

Watched

Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
Mr. & Mrs. Smith (2005)

Read

finished Tough Guy by Rachel Reid
started Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda

After months of The Broken Earth trilogy (so good!) I wanted to have something light again. Part of the reason my progress in the last book was so slow, was because I wanted to savor it, taking it easy. Enter the hockey gays of the third book in the Game Changers/Heated Rivalry series. And lighter does not mean it's a bad book, I really enjoyed it.

After finishing it I started reading Bonita Avenue by Peter Buwalda, because I felt like it and also because it has been so long since I read a Dutch novel which is kinda shameful (I studied Dutch literature at some point and was looking down on people like me who only read English). It's a nice change of pace and certainly a good book so far – I've read the first five chapters of it around 2011 but I never finished and apparently I forgot most of the contents. (It even mentions the game of Go, which I only discovered and started playing in 2013!)

Played

As for RPGs: on Tuesday I ran a game of Foul Play, the goose game I've been a player in two weeks before (that was the play test of the second edition though). It was a fun and chaotic session, as it should be with a story about four spiteful geese visiting a community garden ready for trouble. I took some parts of the play test, but mostly ran the first version. Was fun, would run again!