I am writing this from an intercity train to Amsterdam Schiphol airport where I will catch the overnight flight back to Shanghai. This weekend I spent mainly with my parents, who live in an area with lots of woods and hills (there are a few hills in the Netherlands). Next to getting good food and drinks and catching up on sleep (very necessary after a week that was a bit too busy), I always look forward to staying with my parents because I can spend some time in nature. If you have been reading this blog for a longer time you may know that that is one of the few things that I really miss in Shanghai. Since I started living in the suburbs I at least see a bit of green around my house, but it is very different from the surroundings of my parents house.
Because I only managed to run twice last week in Amsterdam, I really needed to do some running practice, so that’s what I did. On Saturday afternoon my dad any I ran about 8 kilometers through the woods. Running over sand paths deep inside the woods, through grass- and moor land and even over some sand dunes in the middle of the woods. As usual we hardly saw anybody else. It did not go easy. Even though I had a good sleep I was still a bit tired from the busy week and my body did not really cooperate. My muscles hurt and I felt like I had no energy. Of course I did not give up, but to say that running was easy would be a lie.
On Sunday we had planned to participate in a 11 km race on the Besthemerberg (a hill in the woods that you have to climb a few times). But because the race would only start at 10 AM and we were up by 8 AM, we decided to just run our own round. This morning we ran from my parents house to the Lemelerberg and followed a course that involved running up the hill twice. Nature there is beautiful, especially early in the morning. The grass was still wet and filled with spider webs that reflected in the sunshine, and we even saw two deer that crossed the path right in front of us. Fantastic! Although today’s run was longer than yesterday’s (in total about 12 km) it went a lot easier. It shows me that I need to slow down a little bit during this kind of weeks, it’s not good for my body if I need more than 24 hours just to recuperate.
Because we ran early in the morning it was still very foggy. You could not see more than 100 meters when we left, but very soon the sun behind the fog got more power and the fog started to disappear. After about 30 minutes we were greeted by a clear blue sky. It was still pretty cold (during the night it was close to zero degrees) and I had to wear long running pants and even a hat to keep warm. But when we got back home it got warmer pretty quickly, and after breakfast we had coffee and tea in the garden. A nice ending of a successful business trip to the Netherlands. From tomorrow onwards I will mainly have to run on my treadmill again…