Sometimes, you have such a good friend that when she tells you that you should run a race in the Netherlands, you trust her so much that you say yes without thinking much about the commitment. So, a few weeks ago, after absolutely no training regimen, I landed in Amsterdam on a Friday night and settled into an AirBnB near
Olympic Stadium. With race day a day away, we started an extended warm-up on Saturday morning by walking through the city.
As you might know, the Dutch are avid cyclists, so we had to dodge a lot of wheels, even on the sidewalks (top left). The city is so bike-friendly that it has parking garages just for cycles (top right), but they still seem locked to every available accoutrement. Much to my delight, the Dutch are equally obsessed with pastries, so there were not enough racks for bike-riding visitors to
Le Fournil de Sebastien, down the street from our apartment (bottom). The bakery smelled delicious, but my stomach was impatient, so we got breakfast at
Bagel Nosh instead.
We were blessed with excellent roaming -- although not really running -- weather, so we probably completed a 10K just by walking amid the city's canals, classified as a
UNESCO World Heritage Site (top left). Lots of people were getting tours via the waterways themselves (top right), but we were satisfied with our streetside vistas of the coming autumn (bottom left). Even when darkness obscured the tinted trees, the city was alive with color (bottom right).
We didn't have much of a tourist agenda, but we did manage to stumble upon some Dutch tidbits. In
Rembrandt Square, we walked among statues based on the painter's subjects (top). At the
Floating Flower Market, we passed tons of tulip bulbs -- and kilos of marijuana starter kits (bottom left). We were requested not to take pictures in
Begijnhof, formerly a nun-like community of devout women and still now a private community of single women, but I couldn't resist one piece of documentation (bottom right). It was the only rule I broke while in Amsterdam, I swear.
Speaking of famous women of Amsterdam, the day after the race, we stretched our legs by walking to the
Anne Frank House (left). Unfortunately, tickets to the house were unavailable, so we had to settle for seeing a memorial statue of the young writer in front of
Westerkerk, which is right around the corner from the house (right).
But of course, the main event of the weekend was the
TCS Amsterdam Marathon. Races started by the stadium that hosted the
1928 Olympics, the first games in which women were allowed to compete in certain events, like gymnastics. It was also the first Olympics to feature a symbolic fire, the vessel for which could be seen from the starting line (left). I opted to run the half, so I was able to watch TJ, my friend, and the elite runners take off (right). No Olympics records were broken, of course, but competitors set both a new track record, 2:05:09, and a new Dutch record, 2:08:16. I finished half the course in 3 seconds more time: 2:08:19, earning me 2,393rd place in my category, out of 6,170, and 8,492nd overall, out of 15,508.
The best part about running -- and really the thing that makes it worthwhile for me -- is the fueling. For carb-loading before the race, we went to Italian restaurant
Savini, where I had truffle ravioli;
Frietsteeg, where I faced option overload with the many mayonnaises that I could get to accompany my fries; and the
Foodhallen, where I went with salty ramen (top). Our immediate post-race dinner was from the neighborhood Indonesian carryout,
Warung Tegal, chosen for its close proximity and "big meals." We set our sights on traditional Dutch food for our final meal in country. At
La Falote, chef Peter van der Linden sat at our table doing prep work in between making us delicious food, including split-pea soup, or
snert, and smoked herring salad as starters (bottom left) followed by beef stew and
stamppot as mains (bottom right).
The only thing better than fueling is prehydrating and rehydrating. We had to be careful about visiting too many
brown cafes before the race, but we did stop by
Cafe Bos, a bar along the route that bills itself as "home of the Amsterdam Marathon" and that was sponsoring a runner (top left), and
Het Elfde Gebod, or the 11th Commandment, a craft-beer bar near the main train station and across from
Sint-Olofskapel (top right). But my favorite place was
In de Wildeman, which maintained a brown-cafe vibe (bottom left) but also had a highly curated on-tap list, including an old favorite from London: Kernel Brewery (bottom right).
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