Monday Medal : Amsterdam Marathon 2011- 2016

Happy pair of runners with their happy pair of medals!

After the finish of the half-marathon in Amsterdam
TCS Amsterdam Marathon 2016
with
Josianne editor of her personal blog Hey Joos!
She finished way ahead of me;
we took a bit of time to catch our breath
on our way to the exit of a very crowded Olympic stadium!
She is also a blogger  and crew member @ Just Keep Running;
she wrote about her Amsterdam half-marathon 2016, there.

“I'll be happy if running and I can grow old together.” 

― Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running

Happy Feet NL Runs Amsterdam Marathon Stories

If you've been a long time follower of the blog, you know how I struggle to document my running adventures (ace recaps, running related events etc) immediately, regularly and consistently.  

I've accepted that I have my own rhythm, and eventually get around to writing all the stories, I would like to share on my own sweet time!  No more stressing about it.

This week is the week leading to Sunday's 42nd edition of TCS Amsterdam Marathon.  I thought, a great timing and opportunity to share some Happy Feet NL in Amsterdam Marathon stories!

I am not sure how many stories I could share this week but I will try my best to be a productive :) blogger (I am currently on a roll! :D)  empowered by all the positive energy of Amsterdam Marathon memories!

Medal Monday

You will be familiar with the hashtag #MedalMonday, if you are a runner using Instagram as a source of motivation.  

Runners often share a photo of the medal, which they've earned from Sunday's race one more time to celebrate.  Nostalgic runners post medals from previous races to reminisce.  There are a lot of runners, who also  share the image of a medal, they are working on to acquire and use Monday as a means to visualise that goal. The list of reasons can go on! 

Today's post will be all about the medals I collected from Amsterdam Marathon.  There won't be brief race recaps of each event, that'll be for another blogpost.

Amsterdam Marathon 2011

8K medal
from the 36th edition 
of
Amsterdam Marathon (2011)

Very happy to finish for the very first time
in the Olympic Stadium of Amsterdam!
16th of October, 2011

Amsterdam Marathon 2012

A proud pair of 42K medals around my neck! #myprecious :D

Berlin Marathon 2012 and 
Amsterdam Marathon 2012
(from the 37th edition)
medals

Between 25 - 30 km of the 2012 full marathon course
(I have to check to verify!)

Amsterdam Marathon 2013

Half-Marathon Medal
from the 
38th edition of
Amsterdam Marathon 2013

Believe it or not, I only saw this photo today for the first time
while checking the website! 

Running through Vondelpark,
about 3 kilometers away from the finish.
It is always a highlight of the Amsterdam marathon course !

Amsterdam Marathon 2014

In 2014, I wrote a blogpost for the 39th edition of Amsterdam Marathon, 
which won me a starting number for:

Amsterdam Marathon 2014

Sadly, I missed the message informing I won. The story of why I missed it, I will share in another blogpost, and link it here once I've published it.

Amsterdam Marathon 2016

You can create your own superhero photo here!


Happy Runners of the 41st edition of Amsterdam Marathon 2016
For me personally a culmination of my #13HappyHalves 2016 edition

On this blogpost are images, which I myself have only seen for the first time today!

Currently, I am unable to purchase these photos but I am sort of bookmarking these images to remind myself to obtain 1-2 from each year.

In 2011, my husband bought a photo CD of all my race photos! I sadly misplaced it and was glad I uploaded the best of the collection in Google photo archive because I used them in my blogs.

Hope you enjoyed the photos of the Amsterdam Marathon medals!!! Do come back to check for more Amsterdam marathon stories, this week.

09.10.17

Monday

13:10

"Dress-Run" for the Half in Amsterdam

5 days to my 3rd consecutive year of running TCS Amsterdam Marathon -  this year will be my first Amsterdam Half Marathon, thanks to the generosity & sponsorship of VIVA  and Wehkamp.nl.

Feel very lucky to have been selected to run for Team VIVA
via the VIVA Sportief FB Page

In October, 2011, I ran my very first 8K in this event. 

This was my first real running goal, which I trained 8 weeks for.  My training begun literally on the day I decided that I will start to run: 8th of August, 2011. 

This is a memorable picture from the 8th of August, 2011documenting my 8K walk
on the first day of my 8 weeks of training
to run my first 8K!

Running my first 8K, going inside the Olympic Stadium of Amsterdam to reach the finish line of my first running adventure was the most memorable experience in my life.

October, 2011
Almost to the finish line of my first 8K!

The year that followed, I ran my first Amsterdam full marathon - yes, 5 times 8 kilometer and plus some! 3 weeks after I finished my first ever marathon in Berlin.

It was a triumphant return to & a warm reunion with the Olympic Stadium. :)

October, 2012

October, 2011

Perhaps this week, I will finally manage to do a recap of both experiences! My procrastination in doing recaps is monumental. But that is another blog topic for another day!

With this bog, I simply wanted to share something "new", that I hope will become a tradition. 

Contrary to my stressful habit in the last 2 years of last minute choice of what to wear in running events - today, I actually did a "dress-run" for what I am going to wear on Sunday!

Theater lovers, are familiar with the term: dress rehearsals.

I love play in words, and so from now on for fun, I will post blogs (this is how I motivate myself to create a positive habit!) about my "dress-run".

taken outside of our back garden
I am wearing pink long sleeves Dry-Fit running shirt
courtesy of VIVA & Wehkamp.nl
Also, I am wearing ZUZA compression socks
courtesy of Lunatik Athletiks

Monday Easy paced "Dress-Run"

Introducing ~ Happy Feet of a Couch Potato (Repost)

This post was originally published at My Daily Mooosings in the Netherlands, last November, 2011.

first day of training

Almost three months ago (8th of August), I started an 8 week training regimen towards running an 8 km goal, which I happily completed last 16th of October 2011 at the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam.  Unbelievable that it's only been 3 months since I finally started dedicating time to a childhood dream!

Below is the summary in images of how I - a certified couch potato - became a running junkie!

All the stories of the past three months, each journey of individual runs depicted in the images below, as well as future adventures in running will be told on a blog page, I created to specifically store all the images, impressions, experience of this metamorphoses.
.
Please, hop on over and check out : "Happy Feet of a Couch Potato"!  Learn how "Dreaming of Paris" is just as fulfilling and empowering as actually going there!

collage of  my first ever 5K run

Medal for the 6.4 km Run2Day Ladies Run in Amsterdam

Good Morning Run Amsterdam

Just after crossing the finish line!

Medal for the 8K run in Amsterdam

Halloween Run Amsterdam

Edit (20.02.12): While Happy Feet of the Couch Potato will be the home of my musings (philosopical thoughts :D) about running, and how I (TRY to!) conquer the battles of daily life, that I may be able to run well, Happy Feet in the Netherlands will document the journey, the challenges, triumph and yeah, occasionally failure of running through the Netherlands, and bringing this happy feet abroad with me to run for pleasure, recreational races, or simply discover different running trails.

Starting Line

Near the finishline of my first ever 8K race!

0ctober, 2011

Writing and running - they keep my life in balance .

Dreams Do Come True!
October, 2011
Ran 8 km and finished
in the Amsterdam Olympic Stadium

Each in itself helps me stand strong but together they make my feet a happy pair, ready to move forward  inspite of all the obstacles standing in front of me. 

It's almost three years since my family and I moved to the Netherlands.  The season was almost Spring time; it seems a very apt season because we were at the awning of a fresh beginning.  But it's only now three years later that I truly feel, I have completely arrived home.

A year ago, I created the blog, My Daily Mooosings in the Netherlands.  My purpose was to have a place where I could store my impressions, thoughts, memories of living in the Netherlands.  Not so much as creating a place of reference for readers searching for information about how it is to live in the Netherlands.

For a consummate dreamer like me, the blog was a magical canvas, where I could paint how I view life  in words.  Since each day that passes seems can only be described  like a landscape, at other times a still-life, and most of the time a portrait.

Four months later, I created yet another blog, The Lightness of Being on the Bike.  My purpose was to have a place to express the joy of being on the bike, and record my personal bike challenges.  I always am visited by the fairy of ideas, but I almost always never jot down the gift of idea she gives me, and as I was warned they are very fleeting gifts, and need to be stored in words before they fly back to the fairy land.  This blog is currently in slumber but hopefully it will be kissed back to existence before Spring.

Another month later, another blog. This time a place where I could count down my upcoming 40th birthday, Being Beautifully 40.  Perhaps it's vain to do so.  Perhaps it's a way to confront the fears of aging, that I feel I should have but don't.  Perhaps because I enjoy countdowns, and it seems fun to have a place where you can countdown your many birthdays in your 40's.

Now the most recent blog I created is what you can say the sister blog of this young baby blog.  The mother being My Daily Mooosings in the Netherlands.

I begun running last year in Summer.  This is something I have been wanting to do since I was a little girl of 9 or 10 y.o..There were countless times I started but never followed through.  Years of years of finding reason not to, until one day when I was yet thinking of it and saw that it was the 8th of August, and for some random reason stumbled upon in the internet the 8K race in Amsterdam.  It was an event within the annual marathon. 

It was not until I have been running for 3 months that I took time to create a place with a purpose of documenting my transformation: Happy Feet of a Couch Potato, seems to be the apt blog title for this metamorphoses.

You might ask, why yet another blog?!  I guess because I see each journey we make in life like a new book in the library of our lifetime.  In this virtual world, I feel that every journey we would like to document deserves a separate blog.

This blog - Happy Feet in the Netherlands - will be the home for the stories of my running through the Netherlands.  Welcome. :)