Adventures of a marathon girl

Hi y'all, Forgive me for not being a loyal blogger. If you have given up on reading my adventures I can't blame you. If you did stick around I truely want to thank you. I am struggling with time at work, with my love, renovating the new house, being there for my parents and dealing with the harsh and ugly face of ALS which my mom is still going through. Some days are good, some are not so good and some days are just [fill in the blanks with curse words of your choice] If any day why did I choose this day to write an update on my blog? Stephen Hawking died. ALS claimed another life and it just gutted me this morning. Next to a brilliant scientist that had the talent of actually reaching a broader audience with his explanation of quite dificult principles in astrophysics, astrobiology and cosmology he was the spark of hope for those understanding the face of ALS. He was the boy who lived....until just now when his body caved and he died. The world lost a brilliant mind, a man...

When you have been around long enough you know certain things that you won't truely know until you've actually been around for more than a few years. A sucky message to youth but a true one too. Time is literally all you need (well and oxygen, water, food, shelter....ugh...the basics) With the year coming to a close I need some time to reflect and set new goals. Running wise I didn't get to where I wanted to be. I broke my wrist and my anckle and just this week I felt that I could run twice and wear high heels without my anckle shapeshifting into a big ass water melon. Nope...I didn't run the 1000 miles I had set out for myself. Heck I'm happy if I even ran half that distance but I'm sure I didn't even get those miles in. Did it tick me off? Like a fury on a bad day it did. You can bet your sweet ass it annoyed the crap out of me and what's more I learned that I can not deal with muggle fakers on run shoes when I'm cut off. Nope. I can be completel...

Hi y'all, So I ended last week's post on a rather gloomy and somewhat depressing note. I could say that I'm sorry for that and I could try to ease your uncomfortableness by saying I didn't quite mean it like that but you know what? I am not going to do that. I want to be honest on my blog and write what happens in my life as a runner, runcoach, lover, daughter, friend, fundraiser for the Dutch ALS  Foundation and basically just an awkward fourty-somethinger trying to figure out life. So here it is. Lately I have been feeling like shit and I am not going to sugar coat that. If you don't like that or get scared than by all means ....go have fun in the shallows of Funville and ignoretown. I can't offer you that right now. What I can and will do for you is write honest to the gut reports on how I'm doing in recovery since rupturing the anklets on my right foot to the point they ripped of a piece of bone. Wowsah, that hurts. So after two complete weeks of muc...

Hi y'all, So it has been awfully quiet around my part of this here blog and let me tell ya why...EVERYTHING WENT BONCKERS. Seriously everything turned to DONKEY DUNG. So whazzup you ask me? Welll....don't say you didn't want to know. If you don't actually give a rats ass please stop reading now... -----------------Still reading are ya?--------------------------sure you wanna do this?----------------- Right...Don't come back to me complaining about my language or my attitude. This is MY BLOG and I wanna RANT now because I fell down a shithole LITERALLY and my running days are over this season. Wait ...WHAT? YES THAT IS RIGHT! I can't run any of the races I registered for and right now I'm not even sure I can run at all. I can't even stand on my right foot regardless of the maximum amount of painkillers. I'm devastated and angry and non of it will help me but I need to vent because I can't do anything else. So I'm gonna give you the long ...

Hi y'all, This country, much like me, seems to be all or nothing in everything. When it rains...it RAINS, when the cold kicks in your butt will freeze off, when spring visits life blooms around you and when summer decides to make an entrance you better believe it is a grand one. Holy smokestack the weather pulled a 180 and I'm running in shorts and tops again. Loving the summer heat as long as it will last because trust me: the flatlands won't make you enjoy this for too long. Dutch summers are typically wet, grey and not warm. The summer we get to enjoy is about 2 weeks in May and then some around September but hey...I am currently stacking summer joy memories so I can go around telling everybody about our amazing Dutch summers like all the other misguided reality challenged ones around here. Look I have to admit running in the summer heat isn't my favorite time around. Trust me I love heat, summer, beaches and ocean but running in heat I am not a huge fan of. ...

Hi y'all, Remember my last post? The one on the butterflies and how very unclear it was? Well right about three days after that post a huge glittery, sparkly, bubbly and very lively bomb dropped from the sky and made a possitively good kind of mess. I needed some time to just breath, reorganize and wait for the dust to settle just so I could try to find focus in all that is new and awesome. SO what happened? Well I got a new job and by new I mean not only did I find a new place of work...the job itself is completely new to me too even though I do realize that most of what I'm good at is part of the job. I started working as relationship manager at the Dutch ALS foundation on April first and ever since that day I have been trying to keep up with my own life. After about twenty years in education I can honestly say that I had a good run (well...a run...) but that I'm done running that race. Another chapter to the same old story would probably destroy me and even thoug...

Hi y'all, A few weeks ago I told y'all that the switch had flipped and that it felt like things were about to change and now I know they are. This last week it seemed like my whole life was about to flip 180 degrees and turn everything upside down back into to the sunlight.  Maybe it is just spring that suddenly broke lose in Amsterdam, maybe it's alle the positive changes that took shape and form this week but somehow I wake up and go to bed with this weird feeling that all of the things I did these past couple of months have led me to this whole new place and it is as unreal as it is true and I am looking at the world in awe once again. So what happened? The better question here would be; what didn't? Everything happened and it all seemed to happen over the course of 48 hours. It started a week ago with me applying for a job I didn't get but then got a call that they might have something else in mind for me. Without going into further details I can share this ...