April 7, 2019

What an event ; the Rotterdam Marathon is by far the winner when it comes to atmosphere. They predicted close to 1 million spectators and it seems they weren’t kidding. What an event. Despite the fact that I ran 60 km/ 37 miles two days prior to the Rotterdam marathon, I wasn’t hoping for good results today. As a matter of fact, I only planned to run this marathon the day before when I heard on the radio about this great event and than the adventure began. Despite the fact that a bib number to start, I decided to give it a try and to buy a bib number from a runner who wouldn’t go. There are some websites related to the marathon where you can sell bib numbers if you decide not to start and thus I had to take a change but of course also a risk of not getting one. I was in Germany at that time; jumped in the car – drove 650 km (400 miles) from Germany, got in contact with a guy who was willing to sell his bib number. I arrived in Rotterdam the night before at 9:30 pm, picked up the start number and drove another hour to sleep over at my moms house; I slept 5 hours, showed up with sore muscles from the long drive but also from the ultrarun two days prior and still managed to beat my personal best by 16 minutes. Was I hoping for a 3:45:00 finish, but clocked 3:21:00. Not sure what happened there…..No, no steroids I was actually surprised that I made it to 10 km, let alone that I was surprised that my half marathon was good enough to continue I don’t know what but it felt great. What definitely helped was the crowd. They really are amazing in Rotterdam. It’s probably my fave race – not just because of the crowd but also because it was my first marathon I did back in the 80’s:

The start, at the entrance of the famous Erasmus Bridge, reminds me of the start of the NYC marathon where you also start on a bridge (Verrazano bridge). The cool thing about the start in Rotterdam is that famous Dutch singer Lee Towers sings his most famous song ‘You’ll never walk alone’, although they might wanna change that into “you’ll never pee alone” since this is typical 10 minutes before the start when lines for the toilets are endless as all the runners, male and female alike, try to squeeze out the last drops of nervousness 🙂

So I ran under the name ‘Sven’, the guy who I bought the race number from.

And my well deserved medal