The marathon

In my last piece on the marathon you might have noticed a slight hint of motivational speech, even though I said I wasn’t going to do that. Maybe you read the article and figured, not quite such a bad idea at all to get moving more and you’ve joined another team because you find running boring. All we know is that we weren’t able to gather more idiots to come and run half a marathon with us, so we needed to run with the idiots we already had. Spoiler alert: below you get to find out if they made it or not.

Meet our RunNovum team: These absolute winners all made the 21.1 km within the 3 hours. Some trained and with a goal of sub 2 hours, some untrained with the goal to have it please be over and be finished in time. You see them smiling in this picture because I was nice enough to hand them the free beer that was promised from the get go, not because nothing hurts and it was an easy task to accomplish.

Initially our team was bigger, but due to some injuries whilst training and an unscheduled appendix removal, part of our team decided to put on their comfy

From left to right we have Joeri Dings, Benjamin Kuiper, Pim Kaethoven, Thom van der Horst, Bart de Miranda, Iris Teunissen, Stijn Stertefeld and Joep van de Berg. Missing are Niek van Haren and Buck Willemsen. We know they finished but weren’t able to stalk their start numbers after they crossed the finishline so we could not find them for our winners photo. clothes and watch the marathon from the sideline. Or as our very own Theodor Ketelaars said: “I’d rather be at the sideline with a beer in my hand.”

However, the people that were injured trying for this year have made a pact to continue trying for next years’ Eindhoven marathon. Some fanatics have even mentioned whilst drinking a nice free beer that they want to try for the full marathon. Why are we so motivated you might think? We have some ground rules, we’ll run you through them later.

But first, let me run you through this whirlwind of a day, and lets start at the Montgomerylaan.

As you can see, here the team was still fresh and ready to go, super motivated to get a good run in and possibly even a new personal best at a half marathon. Everybody was excited, packed with proteinbars and gells and everything to get some more energy for their muscles to not burn up before the finish. It all started of very professional with an anxiety pee and before we knew it our idiots were on their way. Starting meant getting in 21.1km in 3 hours or paying for a keg, so there was no way they were going to give up along the way, though some of them thought about it.

For some it seemed an easy challenge. Stijn had participated last year and wanted to get some free beer out of it, and Benjamin had even done the full marathon a few years back. To quote him: “It was a nice stroll through the neighbourhood.” But don’t believe that they had it easy during the run, I have the video’s with their facial expressions to prove it wasn’t just a piece of cake. Nevertheless, all of our RunNovum members are absolute winners to me, whether it was an easy run or the fight of their life to make it past the finishline, they did!

To quote Pim Kaethoven: “I thought everything in Eindhoven was close to each other.” As you can tell, he thought wrong. But all jokes aside, as I spoiled earlier, all our idiots made it and were crowned absolute winners. Good thing some of them took Monday off to celebrate their glory by not being able to go down the stairs, nor get out of bed. They deserved it!

So, if you feel motivated to step up yourself, we’ll be doing this again next year. If you think you’re an absolute winner and not an idiot, please sign up! The same rules will apply for our next edition.

Our rules are simple, whether you’re an active member, a passive one, a former member, or somebody that is just very gezellig and needs some motivation, you can sign up for RunNovum by entering our WhatsApp group. Once you enter, you agree to the terms which are simple, but I’ll list them here just in case:

1. Drop out of the challenge = pay for a keg of beer 2. Not finishing the 21.1 km = pay for a keg of beer 3. Not being able to finish the 21.1km within 3 hours = pay for a keg of beer

This year we will try to do more than just the marathon so stay posted for the running events that we will join in 2023! We’d love to get your support from the sideline or on the track running along with us!

Big hug, Emma van Dongen (this time I wasn’t even tricked, I’m starting to actually like this)