Amsterdam (Amigo’s) Marathon 18th October 15

The build up to the Amsterdam marathon took on a completely new twist when Kenny informed Frances and I that the Hotel Amigo which he had just recently booked as our luxury residence (after Islay’s Friday night anything is luxury, bear this in mind) had a small-print addition he had not originally noticed.
The hotel reserves the right to refuse entry to anyone over the age of 40.
 Mmm !! Well Frances could very well get away with it, but let’s face it Kenny and I would need to visit the hair and makeup dept and offer them a challenge for this one.

Anyway nothing we could do about it at this late stage, so on Saturday morning very very early at 3.55 am, or five to four which according to Frances does not sound as bad, but which in my book is still the middle of the night, the ever reliable Eddie picked us all up and whisked us off to Glasgow airport. Eddie volunteered for this as he had an early start at his work that morning but a big thanks anyway to Eddie for a stress free start to the weekend.

There was no problem getting our Gels through customs this year and soon enough we were in Amsterdam heading for the Hotel Amigo .   Kenny had picked up an Amsterdam Transport map showing the Bus, Metro, Tram and rail routes. Now say what you like about Kenny with maps but he redeemed himself over the weekend with his map reading skills, we only got mis-routed once the whole time. It was not really his fault that the buses on Sunday afternoon following the marathon were being diverted from their normal routes requiring a quick hop off and hop on again scenario which worked out all right in the end.

We duly arrived at Hotel Amigo (read Hostel here!) and discovered that the age reason was more to do with scaling the steep, narrow, stairway up to reception, and then being able to cope with the rarefied atmosphere (remember this was Amsterdam home of waccy-baccy). We registered without any embarrassing questions regards age or otherwise and deposited our bags and headed of to the Olympic Stadium for further registration duties at which we got our bibs and marathon T - shirts.

We passed a quiet Saturday evening during which we met a fellow runner in the hostel, Ricardo Espada from Portugal, he was in a different league to us though saying he was hoping to finish in about 2hrs 30.

Sunday morning we had arranged a taxi to the stadium with Ricardo sharing with us (taking no chances here) and were whisked there in jig time. The morning was cloudy about 12C and light drizzle, absolutely fine if you were from Scotland, Ricardo said it was freezing!

When we initially entered the marathon we had put down our times and thought Frances was going to be in the same wave as Kenny and I for 3.30 but she had put 3.33 and was allocated to the following wave. On being funneled through into the stadium proper we tried to smuggle Frances into our wave but an eagle-eyed attendant spotted her and redirected her to the her wave starting pen, Bye bye to Frances who then spent the next 3.5 hrs in the unfamiliar position of running on her own with no one to talk to.

The gun went at 9.30 as scheduled and Kenny and I got over the start line approx 7 mins later, we were about to find out if warm weather training camps, and carb loading was going to work according to the theories.
We started off at a reasonable pace and settled down picking off most of the people in our starting pack and catching our pace maker who was sporting a blue balloon tied to his shoulder at about 9 mls, (shows you how big the wave was). Running alongside canals and windmills may have kept it scenic but some of the canal paths were a bit congested for the number of runners involved. Frances especially was having difficulty with this as she was running at a faster pace than most of the runners around her and had some trouble fighting her way through them. Eddie had mentioned to me previously about the canal route which was down one side and back up the other, needles to say it seemed quite a long never ending stretch , though there was entertainment on the canal people on “ jet boards” , Kenny’s next challenge, as well as music boats to keep us going.

The canal section finished at about 25k, but not before a fellow runner commented to Kenny and me that we were doing really well (for old guys!) Kenny says he is going to stop running with me for some reason.

Back into the city with more drums and music to run by we dropped the pace slightly too about 8 min /miles. At about 30k I felt a bit of niggle at the back of my right thigh and was worried this may be precursor the cramp problem I had the previous year in Dublin. Fortunately this did not prove to be the case and with Kenny’s encouragement I kept going and the niggle disappeared. Due to water stops etc we had being behind or in front of our pace maker for a while and at about 35k I decided I would just stick around that pace to get me in for 3.30 which I would be more than happy with. Kenny was still looking strong and I knew he was hoping for a sub 3.30 something so I said to him to just go for it and he did and the results speak for themselves.

With about 3k to go and following the motivational text I received the previous night from Andrew regards , keep the pace, run hard and have no regrets you did your best ,  I thought I had enough left to get below 3.30 and left the pace makers and went for it.

Happy days, got back into the Olympic Stadium and even managed a wee sprint round the track to the finish line in 3.27.51 , delighted with the time and the fact I was finished. I had just stopped when I heard  a familiar voice,  Kenny who was still in the finishing area had  spotted me though he had managed a terrific time of 3.25.07 he had waited to hopefully see me come in, so we collected our medals together and even got an official photographer to take our photograph to commemorate our run.

Now we had to try and work out where our other Amigo was, we knew she was well back in the wave at the start and had actually spotted us at about 8k when the route went into a loop and she had shouted over so we thought she was roughly about 5 – 10 mins behind us depending on how she was finishing. So we went to the entrance of the stadium to see if we could catch her running in onto the track , due to the fact that she was finishing really strongly we were in the wrong place, she had already ran in and finished in a superb 3.33.50.

Frances actually found us and we got changed and walked about 1 mile to the metro station to start our way back to the hostel. The wee walk helped loosen up our tight muscles but we did have a scenic journey back due to the aforementioned diversion in place.

When we got back we found that Ricardo had finished in 2hr 30.17 which he informed us included an enforced “Paula Radcliffe” stop which cost him about 2 mins, still a great time which he was pleased with.

That evening we went to a restaurant next door and had a lovely 3 course meal and a few beers to round off our weekend, despite Eddie saying we should visit the Red light district it was a bit away from us and we were quite happy eating and drinking in situ, in moderation of course as we are Harriers and athletes.

Monday saw a leisurely trip back to the airport, without any detours, Kenny was an ace with his map by this time, and the flight home.

All in all a fantastic weekend, great company, and a feeling of achievement for all of us with regards to the race itself.
What next? Well Fun in Frankfurt has been mentioned for next October and the more the merrier.
All the photos taken by Frances are in this album.
Billy