My Profile

As nobody knows who and where I am, it might be time to shine some light on that subject. I’m Dutch, yeah that’s right, Dutch courage, Dutch wife, Dutch oven, etc., I’ve heard it all before and it’s very funny. However, I’ve been living in Japan since 2001 and enjoying the food the people and the culture very much. After former Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi left office , I’ve seen a bunch of prime-ministers come and pass and have become increasingly discontent with the Japanese leadership and have lost all interest in the current political agenda. In daily life we can see that the current youth has no sense of direction and has little willingness to improve the situation. But that isn’t really relevant talk on this “RUNNING BLOG” of mine, sorry.

I started running in 2008 after my asthma which I had from birth was cured with ten small pills of homeopathic medicine. My joy was great and naturally became interested in doing sports which I had never been able to do before. I was talked into running by a fellow colleague who had been running for some time. For the first time in my life physical activity didn’t hurt and I actually enjoyed it.

I started running 2 or 3 times a week and saw my stamina build up every week. Then I was encouraged to sign up for a marathon race here in Japan in my own prefecture (Ibaraki, which is about 100K north of Tokyo). From the time I began running to the day of the Kasumigaura marathon was about 7 months. Since the first few moths I didn’t have any kind of base, my training schedule was a little tight. I was able to survive the marathon just under 6 hours.

Now I’m working on building a solid base after injuring myself a couple of times… First I was blessed with a runners knee for which my physician prescribed me with TWO MONTHS of rest and rehabilitative exercises to strengthen the muscles around the knee to give the joints more stability. Everything worked out very fine and I haven’t had any worries since. Another four months into seriously building up my base mileage again I bumped my toes against the door because I was in a hurry to get out and back before the typhoon come into town. My toes were seriously bruised and altogether I was on the sofa with my legs up for another month.

I’m very (overly) motivated to run more marathons and if I can avoid any major injuries I hope to run a 4:00 hour race and eventually a sub 3:30 marathon race. Currently I’m training at a 5:30 Kilometer (8:30 Mile) pace, which would finish me sub 4:00 hours.

Wish me luck!!