7 Marathons Challenge – Marathon 2; Dongen, Holland. 26/09/11

Day 1 was hot and hard….day 2 was hotter and harder!!!  After breakfast and a quick packing of bags we set off for the site in time to be there soon after 9am.  Kevin has an appointment with the site physio for a relaxing massage of weary muscles whilst I went over the final race plans with Jacqueline (the local organiser) and her team.

Today’s run was quite complex logistically.  We started on the Dongen Site with 3 laps around the site perimeter.  After this it was about 10 km along the country lanes surrounding the site and into the City of Dongen for a visit to the local Athletics Centre where we were met by members of the local council.  At the Athletics Centre, Kevin had to run 10 laps of the track before heading back out onto country lanes for a further 24km of running to return back to the site.

Kevin was joined by runners for Dongen and Londerzel Sites for various distances, from 1km up to the full marathon….about 20 runners in total.

To keep the runners safe we had a small convoy of vehicles….a lead car to close the roads, a chase car to keep Kevin and his co-runners fuelled with water and drinks, a taxi minibus to ferry runners to and from their relevant start and finish points and finally, the Site Safety Manager on his moped to coordinate the whole activity.  There were also a couple of members of the sales team positioned at strategic points with more food and drinks.  Jacqueline and her team had done a superb job on all this organisation and it all came together very smoothly.

However…..today was HOT.  The cars were reading 28 degrees and there was only a slight breeze to keep the runners cool.  Kevin also admitted after the run that he had let his machismo get in the way and had allowed the pace to be slightly faster in the first half of the run than he should have and, as a consequence, the second half of the run was pretty hard work.  However, he did record a very good time of 4 hours and 23 minutes, faster than yesterday!

I did also find one or two items that I had missed on the event risk assessment during today’s run as follows (fortunately these were only observations and not real accidents):

1.       Head injuries caused by falling acorns and nuts from the trees.

2.       Being run over by the chase car that gets too close.

3.       Being electrocuted by the electric animal control grids that cross the roads.

4.       Eating lunch on a moped!!!!

We made a quick exit after the run as we had quite a short time window to get to Schiphol Airport for this evening’s flight to Stockholm.  So after saying our goodbye’s and thank you’s we set off back to the hotel for Kevin’s ice bath and then for the run north to the airport.  In the end, we had plenty of time and managed a bite to eat at the airport before the flight at 20:15.

Add to this a 2 hour flight and a 1 hour taxi ride and it was a quite late arrival at the hotel this evening.....I think I will sleep well tonight !



Distance travelled today:  1300 km
Total distance travelled:  3175 km


Distance run by Kevin today:  42.2 km
Total distance run by Kevin:  84.4 km