Week 20 of 2026: Bijlmerrun

This was a weird short week, with Thursday being Hemelvaart and – as is tradition – taking the Friday off too to get an extremely long weekend. I surprise-visited my mom on a ceramics market in Dwingeloo, went to Nijmegen for some RPG festival (see below), ran way too much in Bijlmer (see below) and visited my dad too.

Read

I didn’t read much, and I think I’m putting down the ADD book for now, as there are other non-fiction books I am more curious about. Still read a few pages though:

• continued in Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid

Watched

I almost never watch movies – only Youtube videos – but when I do I like to include it here too.

I rewatched John Wick (2014) after listening to the newest episode of Dice Exploder, in which they analyse the first 30 minutes and why they are so great. I do agree that I enjoyed it more now than the first time I watched it – back then I had the impression I somehow missed some backstory, since it was already a three-movie-franchise at that point – now I see it’s indeed a great way to introduce a character. But after that 30 minutes, it’s just a lot of killing, and although I see the appeal, it’s just not my genre.

(This also means that after starting at the end of november last year, I have now listened to the full archive of Dice Exploder. Highly recommend if you are into game design for tabletop roleplaying games.)

And since I was in the mood for movies now / figured out I can access my parent’s Netflix again for now, I also rewatched Pulp Fiction (1994). In my opinion an even more interesting way of telling a story, and it still has killing in it, but not in the massive choreographed way as John Wick does. It was a good rewatch.

Played

On Tuesday it was time for Mausritter again. I notice I am pleased with my digital notes: it feels cooler, running the whole thing with just paper and mind, but having things digital is certainly easier and more accessible. And I have the cute small GM-screen for Mausritter, which I was already using to hide my version of the world map. I can easily hide my iPad behind it – running Obsidian with sync enabled – so there is no need for a laptop on the table.

On Wednesday I went to Queer Arcana in Utrecht to run Brindlewood Bay there. I had three players and as I maybe could have expected: it was total chaos. Grandma’s afraid of nothing, grandma’s stepping fully clothed into a jacuzzi, grandma’s who were actually just their normal D&D character... although I had fun, I am still not one hundred percent sure I actually liked this session. It was very creative though, and that was nice.

On Friday I went to Nijmegen for the second day of Novio Magica, a fantasy festival in the city centre. The first day it was all over Nijmegen, but this second day was only in the Stevenskerk and it was as big as I expected: not that big. We played an entertaining Alice in Wonderland themed “self-made RPG” that I would really just call an interactive story, but mostly I just chatted with D. a lot.

After the festival we went to D’s home in Gorinchem to play Brindlewood Bay. Unfortunately, his boyfriend was a bit too tired to join us, so we improvised a one-on-one version of Brindlewood Bay, giving him two elderly NPCs to form a mystery novel reading club with in the Dutch coastal town of Bloemwijk aan Zee. It was my first time doing a full one-on-one session and honestly: it works. It was also great to have a Dutch session again, with some English dialogues when we encountered a clearly American character. This also makes me less afraid about ticket sales for our Queer RPG Night in the future: I can always make it work.

Ran

On Monday I ran home after volleyball training, with a detour, for 7km. I was trying to go easy, but for the first part I was accompanied by a fellow player who traveled home on skeelers, and wheeled company always makes me speed up slightly.

On Saturday, it was time for the Bijlmerrun. I live in Bijlmer and previous years this race has started 400 meters from my house and the runners would pass directly under my window. Previous editions I unfortunately found out about it too late – it’s sold out pretty quickly – but luckily the sales go through Atleta (my employer) so I was aware this time around.

But even with that awareness, the half marathon was sold out by the time I made it to the checkout. I therefore purchased a ticket for the 10k. Half an hour later I mentioned it to my coworkers and we saw tickets for half marathon were available again, so I purchased those as well, intending to resell my 10k ticket. I didn’t do it via public resale right away, as I wanted to make someone I knew happy with it. At some point, however, I noticed that resale had ended and I was stuck with two tickets.

Long story short: on Saturday I first ran 10km on my own (at 17:15; 51:05 minutes) and then ran the half marathon (at 19:00) with two coworkers. In the third loop I noticed my watch was almost empty, so in the fourth and final loop I sped up a bit hoping to record the whole thing in one go, but unfortunately it died on me 2km before the finish, and I had to record the rest via my iPhone.

Right before the end of every loop there was a 50m sprint section – I encountered it six times in total. Happy to report that with 7.433 seconds on one of those occasions, I placed 28th. With 2:03:18 this was my slowest half marathon so far, but it was fun to run it together.