No more words needed 🏅🙏🤩✨
Thank you so much for your support during this amazing journey and for your generous donations for the patients in need.
And remember: if your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.
~The end~
The last 200m, flying down in the mud, until that very moment when you cross the Finish line 🤩✨✨ totally overwhelmed by so many emotions after such an achievement 🙏⛰🙏
That magical moment when you hear the “Amazing Grace” played on a bagpipe, and you are suddenly wondering if this is a dream or if you are really seing these two men standing on top of the rocks playing music!! By then you also know the finish line is getting closer...
The last few kilometers, in the frozen rain on the ridge, walking one after the other, in the immensity.
And then suddenly you see ... this!!! 😱🤩
Alphorn players standing for us on the mountain and throwing Swiss flags ⛰ 💯 Swissness ❤️
Happy runners 😃🤩✨ having the time of our life 😍
Overwhelming landscape at Lauterbrunnen, a 300m-high waterfall
Passing ‘The Wall’
It’s not too late to add some photos of this amazing adventure 🤩😅✨ you can still donate 🙏🙏
Wednesday 11-09
Jungfrau Marathon 🏔How about a race recap? 📚🏃🏽♀️<<long story>>
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It took me several days to get through the emotions and put all these moments together, that made my Jungfrau Marathon experience something so unique and so overwhelming.
Debbie @fitfunrun_ from The Netherlands had asked me if we could run together. I thought it was a good idea, we were so excited at the start, realizing that we were about to make a dream come true 🤩today, after months of preparation for this race in the 🏔 We decided to run the first 25km (flat) at a slow pace 6:00 in order to gather enough energy for the climb. It felt so nice to speak Dutch and laugh while running and enjoying the view, a huge waterfall 😍and us, so small running in the valley surrounded by impressive mountains all around us, the music 🎶 and the supporters along the way!! Really this first part of the race went so fast this way that suddenly we realized the hard work was just about to start at Lauterbrunnen. First real climb, all walking now, passing ‘The Wall’ symbolizing the start of vertical kms. 5km from 821m to Wengen at 1283m. Luckily the sky is clearing up and from there the view is already impressive!! We stop at almost every station to drink and eat. At this point we loose track of each other with Debbie, not running at the same pace. I feel a burst of energy and manage to run up for quite some time, with a big smile on my face 😃
A lot is going in my head.. I am so thankful to be here today doing this!! My injury in June made me doubt I could do it by then, not being able to walk for a few weeks! Coming from far... and yet I am here, my body is strong and I am having a blast! Whatever pain I endure, I chose for it, and it will be temporary... unlike the one endured by patients suffering with cancer like leukemia the cause I am running for 🙏 Until km 36 it is going well. People around me seem exhausted, walk a lot, but I manage to keep running as often as possible. My training in the mountains and hills seems to really pay off today. But I hope I don’t overdo it risking an injury at my heel... so far so good!! By now it is getting steeper and steeper, and colder. Suddenly I hear the Alphorn and see traditional musicians standing on the mountain playing music. OMG this is amazing!!! Big smile 😃 maybe the last one until the finish...🙃
The mountain path is muddy, slippery, there are rocks that you need to climb, and from now on I’m working on my mental to push my body. We are at the foot of a huge vertical rock/mountain on our left and feel minuscule like a colony of ants down under. Cold rain starts falling, you glimpse snow on the mountains around you through the mist. I stop a few times to look around me instead of looking at where I put my feet. I want to engrave these unique moments again and again in my memory.
So many people walking one after the other in a queue at the moraine, and this silence... Only breathing and shoe steps. Very strange, mystical... Km 40, almost there... but these last kms are hell!! For the first time breathing becomes an issue. I never felt this before, so walking now very slowly and looking behind me every now and then at the chain of people in the immensity. One person starts making a huge liberating noise like a wolf or something, echoing... another person does the same a further down. This says what we are going through, both pain and admiration, pushed to our limits. Suddenly another surprise... I hear the sound of bagpipes 🎶🏔🎶 Two men are standing further up, on the highest point at 2320m on the Eigergletscher, at Lauchereflue, playing traditional music. This is surreal 😳 But it seems wherever I go my Celtic roots are satisfied, even here of all places 😲🤩😆 emotions.... But once there it also means the end is near... passing a little lake all smoking from the cold. From now on running downhill to the finish is so liberating. It is very muddy and slippery but I don’t care, I sprint down giving all I’ve got left 😅 to hit the finish after 5 hours, 42 minutes and 36 seconds. And now I let the emotions flow 😭 through my entire body after such an unbelievable adventure. I did it!!!! We did it!!!
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Thank you for taking the time to read my very long report 😁I hope you enjoyed it ☺️ Also a huge thank you for your very generous donations 🙏❤️ Do not give up on your dreams. Fight for them and make them come true ✨🤩✨
Saturday 07-09
I did it!!!🏅 I made a dream come true 🤩 it was not comparable to anything I’d done before. Completely overwhelmed by this incredible experience!!! Taking me a few days to process... I will write a complete race report in the coming days. Thank you for you amazing support along this amazing journey 🙏🙏
Friday 06-09
Almost there...
Following my running plan, I went for a very short run today. My body feels somehow tired, but they say it’s a good sign, tomorrow I’ll feel the energy kicking back.
The weather conditions looking pretty bad with snow at the Kleine Scheidegg, maybe some rain and a temperature difference of 15 degrees from the start to the finish 🥶 makes it quite difficult to know ... what to wear!! I brought many different running clothes with me!!
I arrive by train at Interlaken a bit before 3, check in my hotel and head to the Marathon Village. Great atmosphere and comparing to Paris and Rotterdam this is very small, but I prefer it this way.
There I meet Debbie from The Netherlands whom I will be running with, and go to the booth of the Blood stem cells registry. By now I have fetched my start number, and feel very exciting and nervous about tomorrow ✨❄️✨❄️
** the organization may change the running route due to the bad weather conditions. Ok, I won’t expect the picturesque mountains views I had dreamed about when I registered for this race🤷♀️It will be very epic!! Wish me luck 🍀💪
Tuesday 03-09
A recovery run at a slow pace, being in harmony with the beautiful nature around me in full introspection. One of my thoughts was to realize that it is the end of a few months training for something big, a beautiful journey 🌸 so thankful of being able to show up at the start on Saturday. In June I really doubted I could be there, not even able to walk after an injury during a half-marathon in Zürich. This pain was temporary, not everyone has so much luck!! I hope I can make a difference by this action, for the patients suffering from leukemia and waiting for a matching donor for a potential lifesaving stem cell transplantation. ✨✨✨
Monday 02-09
Only 5 days to go to the big event!!😱 I am getting more and more nervous 😬
Today’s session is a fartlek.
20 min warm up, then off I go, playing with the pace, from slow to medium to fast to very fast in a random order, at a random
duration. This is so much more fun than an interval training on a track 😄 I choose some elements around me to adapt my pace, from a tree to a statue to a bench etc. Fartleks are really my favorites, you train hard and play all together 👌👌
Friday 30-08
Last training in August. Running with a plastic bag again at the golden hour 🤩🌿✨#plogging 🌍💚
6km recovery run along the Limmat river, doing my best to run slowly... I really had to put the brakes a few times🙃... my legs kept going too fast... maybe they just go wild when running on flat ground after many hills lately 🤓
Thursday 29-08
After a rest day yesterday, it’s time for my last interval training in the mountain during lunch time. Running as fast as possible during 45 seconde on a steep hill, 6 times in a row, after a 20mn run warming up. My lungs were on 🔥 my face 💦 my legs all shaky 🙃 I added a few running drills in the end. If you don’t push your limits during your training, it’s not on race day that you will perform, it’s worth the effort. 😉
Tuesday 27-08
Discipline is doing what needs to be done, even if you don’t want to do it.
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31 degrees, little motivation today, but job done ✅ 8km steady run...
Telling myself that it’s the hard days that are what makes you stronger 💪 and off course I was all happy afterwards 😉✨✨
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I am now in the Tapering phase. Tapering??? It means reducing the volume of the training mileage during the final two to four weeks leading up to the marathon, allowing the body to fully recover before the race, and prepare for peak performance.
Monday 26-08
Today is my last ‘long run’ before the Jungfrau Marathon.
It’s a very sunny day and I take the opportunity to go back to the Loorenkopf observation tower in the forest. From up there, there is a beautiful view on Zürich region and the Alps. Seeing how huge the Jungfrau mountain is 🏔 is very impressive and intimidating... 4158 m!!! In 11 days I will run 1829m of height, bringing me to the finish at Eigergletscher at an altitude of 2320 m, in 42,195km. This is the goal, this is the dream that I will make come true 🙏🤩✨#icaniwill
Friday 23-08
Recovery run at the golden hour, my legs still hurt after yesterday’s long run in the mountains 😅 so today is about running at a slow pace, adding some stretching, using the foam roller and massaging.
You may wonder what I hold in my hand on this photo? It’s a bag full of litter that I gathered along the Limmat river during my run. When I don’t need to focus on a specific pace I can as well use my running time doing something good, which is ‘plogging’! To my good surprise there was not so much waste along the way today, meaning that either other runners came plugging too, or -hopefully- people start being more careful about their waste.
Thursday 22-08
Time to test the real thing at last! Today up to the mountains ⛰💚 I took the train to Lucerne and then another train to Küssnacht am Rigi where I started my ascent. The more I climbed the more foggy it became. Running in the forest was very mysterious and a bit spooky, I couldn’t see further than 1 meter ahead of me!! I heard the cow bells, but could hardly distinguish them!! So I imagined I could just forget a beautiful view once at the top ... But I was so wrong! Suddenly the sun came through just as I came out of the forest, and what I saw was almost surreal. I was above the clouds!! Normally you see this from a plane... and instead of catching sight of Lake Lucerne down below, there was a sea of white clouds, with the top of some mountains suddenly piecing through them. Magical!! By now it was becoming very steep and I had to alternate running and hiking 😅 And there I arrived at the top of Mount Rigi (at 1757m of altitude) with an amazing 360 view above the clouds under a deep blue sky with so many mountains all around !! It was worth suffering!! This session gave me a taste of what to expect in two weeks 😱😬 magnificent and very tough all together!
Today I ran 25km with D+1526m, and added about 10km commuting by bike. Enough to deserve a huge dinner back home #rungry 😋
Tuesday 20-08
Run in the rain today, soaking wet! Good training up in the forest trying to avoid the 🐌 😅 the leg’s are back 👍👍
Monday 19-08
Short run in the planning but today my legs didn’t want to cooperate. Very heavy and no energy... this is part of the process. It’s not always easy and I have to accept it. Tomorrow better!
Time for an update about the last few days. I did my long run on Thursday, increasing the mileage every week. 26km and I ran two times the local mountain of Zürich, the Uetliberg 😅 to get my body used to some inclination. It was epic and I had to climb at times!! Tough training but I had to do it, not only for the physical part, but to work on the mental aspect too. I am not sure if I will manage to run in the ‘real’ mountain 🏔 before D day, so I grab every chance to run with inclination locally.
Yesterday I did a recovery run at a slow pace, which is in fact perfect to do some ‘plogging’ at the same time (gathering the waste you see along your run) hoping to inspire other runners to do the same 🌎💚
Total this week: 57km 🏃🏽♀️ and 27 🚴🏻♀️ (communting).
Now getting ready for next week, even more intense than this one 😅💪
If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got.
- Albert Einstein .
Today’s training: Interval on hills ⛰
First: you need to find a hill that’s long enough for 45 sec at a fast pace - I found one just by the track in my village 👌 Probably 12% inclination 👍
Then >> 12 x 45 sec up hill as fast as possible maintaining the pace, the last 3 ones even faster... while you are already almost dead 🥵 it was tough, but wow that feeling of satisfaction afterwards was so worth it ➡️ #nopainnogain 💪
My way of celebrating my 2nd year living in beautiful Switzerland today 🇨🇭❤️with some sweat 💦😄
Happy feet 👣 About yesterday, running with inclination again in the beautiful forest back in Switzerland 🇨🇭 The coming two weeks will be very intense, the Jungfrau Marathon is approaching✌️I am full of energy💥 no longer jet lagged 👍
Sleepless in Amsterdam vs Sleepless in Seattle 🤷♀️🙃
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I couldn’t run the past few days, I had a sort of summer flue (not related to the spiders bite-4 of us had the same symptoms out of 6) for a few days, then we took off to visit Seattle and surroundings, went canoeing and hiking 🌲🤩
Back in The Netherlands. I thought yesterday’s run battling against the heavy wind would exhaust me enough to sleep without interruption, but it didn’t #jetlagged...again🙈🙈
It took me one week of sleepless nights in Seattle at the start of our holidays, hopefully it won’t take me as much time to readjust to our European time 🙄 Luckily my body has had some good rest and the legs felt good yesterday. Ready to catch up on my training, and above all, finally run in altitude ⛰ the coming weeks 😉
What the HILL?
My last speed hills session in Seattle 🔹 5x 1’ uphill reps, jog-down recovery 🔹5x 45 sec uphill reps, jog-down recovery
🔹3x 30 sec uphill reps, jog-down recovery
3 min rest in between the series
Run up hill for 3 min, accelerating the last 30 sec #nopainnogain 💪👍 with a view on Lake Washington jogging down 🤩
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Wearing my #worldmarrowdonorday Tee to remind myself how lucky I am to be able to do this, and the cause I am supporting—> link in German, French or Italian- please let me know if you need help to donate I can translate in English)
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I actually like these sessions, just like intervals, you push your body, you sweat it all out, you build speed, leg power and strength, so it’s 💯 worth the effort 👍👍
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Have a wonderful start of the week😎😃🌺🌼
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As I am writing this I am lying in bed, 🤒 not sure exactly what it is, maybe an allergic reaction to a mosquito or spider bite🕷feeling all numb, headache, my body aching like I had the flue, with fever, and my foot all swollen and burning 🔥so no long run today 🤷♀️>> my first time to the doctor in America instead ... to be continued
Bye bye July! Ending the month with a half marathon on the Burke-Gilman Trail 👌viewing the beautiful Lake Washington 🤩🌲 The heat made the last few kms quite difficult, but remembering the cause I support gave me the strength to push through 😌
Greetings from Seattle 🇺🇸 I had hoped that this run would help me against the jet lagged, but it didn’t 🤷♀️🙃 heavy legs at the beginning then after a few kms I felt strong again. The good thing here is that since the streets are like a tic tac toe so it is very easy to find your way! Though for this first run I decided not to go too far and ran two times around Green Lake. Strava stopped do I actually ran 15km. Seattle is a beautiful city and next to running we walk a lot to discover the place, between huge skyscrapers and the beautiful Pioneers District.
In the short time staying in The Netherlands I managed another run, a 10km fartlek before breakfast in the Amsterdamse Bos, bringing back such good memories of my first triathlon there 3 years ago 🌿 I saw some warning signs about the oak processionary caterpillars🐛‼️ 😅 (eikenprocessierups), luckily for me I didn’t get any issues from them! Now packing again as my next runs will take place on another continent 😉 44 days left to the Jungfrau marathon ☘️
The summer holidays have now started 😎 Back in The Netherlands after almost 2 years, for a few days before flying to the next destination in another continent ☺️ The training goes on in the very green and very flat countryside. It is even a strange feeling to think that we are below sea level coming from the mountains now 😆 The legs felt good, I actually ran faster than planned, not looking at my watch. Closing the week strong with 47km 👍 The question now: I need to actually train in the mountains to get used to the altitude, obviously The Netherlands is not really the place for this 🙃 so planning some hikes on our next destination... to be continued 🌿
Long run: I woke up early to make sure I could achieve my long run before the heat. 18,5km in the books around Zürich Lake, a swim in the lake, and running back home, +316m elevation. My longest run since my injury in June, and no pain noticed 😅 I do a lot of stretching during and after each run. What a awesome feeling to have ran this distance before the day has officially started 👌
As summer holidays are starting, the big challenge is to find out how to implement my marathon training into the family life without putting too much pressure, to enjoy the holidays in a relaxed way, but having the job done. Yesterday’s track interval session was interrupted by a few basketball games and other sportive activities with our daughter, and ended up shorter than planned, so I adjusted the pace. Less kms but faster on the 300m track. It’s all about being creative, flexible and accept that it might not be perfect for a few weeks, especially when we will be traveling abroad.
Welcome to my fundraising page for the SBSC!
There is a bit less than 2 months to go until the big day: September 7th 2019
42,195 m - D+1829m - 4000 runners, and a stunning landscape!
The Jungfrau Marathon, "Der schönste Marathon der Welt"
Fully motivated for what's ahead of me!! Living in Zürich area allows me for beautiful runs in the forest, gaining altitude to train my body, even though we are far from the high mountains here! (the Uetliberg, the Zürich mountain is 869m). Nevertheless I choose to run on many steep stairs with variations as a full body workout, combined with some stretching sessions.
I will keep you regularly informed on my training.
On this photo I am wearing the World Marrow Donor Day (WMDD) T-shirt I have received from my previous colleagues at the World Marrow Donor Association when I left The Netherlands to live in Switzerland. Since the Jungfrau Marathon is taking place only two weeks before the #wmdd2019, I will be even more inspired to run with the thought of the celebrations around the world to thank all the donors.
Die Aufnahme von neuen Blutstammzellspenderinnen und -spender in unser Register ist aufwändig und teuer. Die Bestimmung des Gewebetyps muss in hochtechnisierten Labors durchgeführt werden. Aus diesem Grund sind wir auf finanzielle Unterstützung angewiesen.