The trip

Part 2 of my first 2 in 24 hours attempt. After a gentle but not too gentle Saturday afternoon marathon in Brussels, Ciara and I were on the train to Amsterdam that evening. On the train, I tried to do as mush as I could to massage my legs. I’m not sure if my efforts really did much but luckily my legs didn’t seize up quick enough to cause me any significant issues. We got into Amsterdam after sun set and decided that the best dinner option was a quick service pasta from a lunch style restaurant in the station. After chucking that down, we walked to our hotel in Kattenburg and I was straight to bed.

I was less sure on what route I’d be taking around the city and knew it would be particularly difficult to run in the busy city centre due to the tight roads and canals. So I turned to my ‘ol faithful solution of simply running when everyone else is asleep and started nice and early.

However, I hadn’t been to Amsterdam before this and seemed to forget to consider its reputation as a night time city. This meant that when I set off around 5, the central streets were far from deserted. I didn’t have any trouble but the first few miles of me trying to navigate round canals and learn the city layout a bit also included lots of funny looks from the crowds that were still on yesterday.

I initially took my whole rucksack with me but quickly decided a plan that I have since used many times. A marathon is basically just 4 10ks with a bit extra on the end. So why don’t I just treat it like that? There’s a chance that so might need the toilet at some point on this run and the only place I’ll be able to go is in the hotel room so I might need to go back inside at some point. So why don’t I just leave most of my stuff, notably heavy water, inside and make three stops. So after 6 and a bit miles (to eat into the ‘bit extra’ gradually through the 10k segments) I headed back to the hotel and sorted out my stuff quickly.

The general rule that I’ve imposed is that when making stops or going inside for whatever reason that arises, I will pause the watch to avoid the GPS getting confused and adding extra distance, and avoid any sort of mechanical transportation. For example, even though the hotel had a lift, I used the stairs to get up and down. If the assisted option is the only option then so be it, but the same would apply to escalators if there are stairs, travelators if there is space next to them to walk and so on.

So down I went via the stairs for my second, more lightweight, segment. There was a small gap on this segment of the most peaceful streets. This seemed to be the small slot between when most of the party goers had gone to bed and most workers weren’t yet on their commute. It is a very short gap compared to most other cities. I rand some more laps of the dense streets in this segment but it did cross my mind that the relative peace won’t last long so I tried to consider other options for where I could run later. After the exploitation of the park in Brussels the day before, I had thought about finding a similar green space in Amsterdam but these are a bit harder to come by, at least around the area I was running around, because of all the water. So I thought I’d try and use the water’s edge a bit more effectively. Instead of hugging the canals, I got a few miles out of the dock / bay areas.

I was then on the way back for the second stop pretty well motivated. We were staying in Pension Homeland in Kattenburg. The National Maritime Museum was on the route back and to add to the confusion around timings and day and night, there was some sort of night time event going on in there. Not sure what it was exactly but I think I saw people with sleeping bags. The clientele looked more like middle class museum goers rather than homeless people so it looked more like a ticketed sleepover rather than a shelter for the night. I didn’t know and I didn’t bother to stop and ask questions because there were more miles to run.

Segment three was then much more dedicated to the wider open paths than the central canals. Around the NEMO science museum round to the train station and back on both the water and city side provided enough miles of paths without lights traffic or other crossings to be able to keep moving at a reasonable pace. So that’s what I did, just kept running this way and that way to explore a bit. It was quite a nice place to run, as can generally be said for any jog along a body of water. There wasn’t much excitement to deal with, until the main bridge I was using to cross from one island started to rise to let a boat through. Other than that it was just 6 more miles on the watch and then back to the hotel.

For the fourth segment I decided to go back to my new stomping ground and just get the miles done on the trustworthy paths. The city was very much awake by this point so I thought it would be best to stay in the quiet zones. This was also the first time I’d attempted two marathons in two days so I wasn’t sure what my body would do, I was waiting for something to pop, ping or just give up at any minute. My legs were slowing down but as I looked at the clock rather than stopwatch on my Garmin, I realised that if nothing went wrong then I’d probably come in under 24 hours from the start in Belgium to the end in the Netherlands. This was great motivation and kept me going. After a few more slow up and down round and rounds, I made it to the full 26.2 in five hours and 2 minutes, or just over 23 hours from Brussels.

Back to the hotel with a smile on my face, I was done in time for breakfast. Ciara and I had a nice meal to start the day in the sun before going for a bit more of an explore. This was the first time in Amsterdam for both of us and it is just what you expect really. Cannabis shops on every corner and ‘ladies of the night’ in the windows during the day. The most culturally respectful activity on the Amsterdam to do list is to visit Anne Frank’s house, but we couldn’t get a booking on short notice so we just had a look from the outside. Thanks to my Amex voucher, we had another nice meal at a little fancy restaurant and before long we were heading back to the train station for a tired cramped journey back to London. have thought ridiculous not too long before.

Evidence