A bad rehearsal is a good dress rehearsal. I hope so, because a lot went wrong. Fortunately, the beautiful setting of the Meijendelloop makes up for a lot.
If you are training for a long trail distance, you want to finish as many conditions as possible. After the two NS trails – for the necessary fatigue – I decided to take some hills and speed as well. The goal: the Meijendelloop. During the NS trail I came partly over that course and it made me enthousiastic again for this 25 km run which I did together with Rob Gordijn in 2017.
However, there was one problem: I didn't have a ticket yet. And the Meijendelloop is extremely popular with club runners because of its beautiful, but tough course. The 350 places are usually full in an hour. After asking around and posting on Facebook, I managed to get a starting ticket from an injured competitor. Exactly in time to get it through the post even more reasonable certainty. But unfortunately there was no mail on Thursday. Not even on Friday. ’ Late in the evening it was sweating if I could have a new number from the organization. And yes, I was allowed to walk with number 386. By the way, the envelope with the start proof turned out to have been delivered wrong and came in a week later.
Day and dew
Not only the beautiful surroundings, also the starting time makes the Meijendelloop special. You actually start in the twilight, at 8 o'clock ’ in the morning. And since there is no ov direction start, that meant getting up at five o'clock and an hour later by bike in the subway. It immediately reminded me again why I have an 800 Lumen headlight on the Me-Mover: with the small headlight of my city bike I barely saw the path. The closer I got to Meijendel farm, the starting point, the more exciting and darker it became. Luckily the race signs led me in the right direction.
Not only is it dark so early, it's especially cold. Luckily there was shelter and hot coffee in the changing room. Because I didn't intend to run really fast, I had chosen a relatively warm set: thermoshirt with merino long sleeves over it and the long Fusion C3 tights which are also nice and warm. At the last moment before the start I went outside and I didn't have a cold moment before and during the run.
The fact that I left a little harder than planned helped. Ramona's slowing me down again? Anyway, it took some time before RMD's Rene van den Ende and Edwin van Hagen passed me.
From the solution
At the beginning of the message I said that some things had gone wrong. Well, the main problem was the blood sugars. Because of the cold, I think a large part of the Generation Ucan came out of the solution. At the bottom of the bottle and soft flask was a thick layer of starch. I have to pay better attention to that during the Winter trek. More shaking if necessary. So it became extremely much biting with bubbles while walking.
The problem started very early. Around 8 kilometers. Normally with Ucan, 1 nougat and 1 bag of Torq I can easily last 2.5 hours. It meant stopping and feeling for a moment. Something I could repeat regularly up to km 22 (even pricked there). Luckily it also allowed me to take in a spectacular rainbow. Enjoy.
Bubbles
The rainbow has accompanied me for a long time during the run. It's a hopeful symbol. And also felt a bit like someone was watching over me. That helped with the repetition. Often I tend to push and eat too quickly, people think you can't physically do it anymore because of bad training and you want to disprove that. But the blood sugars are also a physical problem, and you exacerbate that with that trap. And you also get very tired of it, as can be seen on the picture above. As far as that is concerned, I am very satisfied that I have been looking after myself.
Seeing the above picture’s, you might think that the Meijendelloop is a trail. The dunes, the forest, the beautiful views. It is true that the trail goes over many hills, which are taken with speed by the club runners, and over shell paths, but most of the paths are clinker or asphalt. This is also one of the reasons why you can cross the trail so fast and why zo’n two-thirds of the participants come from athletic clubs.
In my memory, the climbs and shell paths dominated. That was the third mistake: attracting the Superiors. They did very well on sand and shell, but wet or icy stone is a completely different story. In Skye I slipped with them because the studs are hard and do not provide a grip on this type of surface. Again, I had to grab the verge with the pieces of black ice as much as possible.
Also at the end of the barrel the studs turned out to be my Achilles heel. There was always a lot of pressure on the vowels where the studs are on the sole. This caused very slight blistering. My first blisters in Altra’s (none on the marathons, none in Lanzarote and none on the Airborne)…
We're almost there.
All the mistakes made me happy once I smelled the barn. I surprised myself with the speed I could still squeeze out of it. And then you don't feel the pain, the fatigue, the studs pressed into your skin anymore. No, you go full for dessert. Another tradition in Meijendel: apple pie with whipped cream at the finish line.
It didn't go really great. Nevertheless I finished in 2.29.20, a reasonable speed considering the nutritional problems. And a quarter of an hour faster than 2 years ago. It was because of the hills, which I sometimes took a bit too fast, and because of the fatigue and (nop)pain maybe a very good preparation for those 105 km. Sometimes it hurts, deal with it.
The way back made me all zen again. I couldn't use the GPS route due to lack of reception with Vodafone (that's what Komoot needs to reverse the route). Luckily I met an errant lady with the same problem, and more sense of direction. Together we cycled back in the direction of the city, chatting. And we had to laugh very hard when that didn't work out at first and after a few kilometers we were in front of the farm again.
English (UK) 
Nederlands