The weather was perfect for running, sunny with a cool breeze. The whole city of Leiden was turned upside down to host the biggest sporting event of the year, the Leiden Marathon. From the early morning till late evening hundreds of volunteers and supporters did their best to make sure that the runners had a day to remember. And we did!

Some runners had been training a lot, running together, and supporting each other. Some had been training only a little bit or even not at all. But on that day we were all ready to go for it in our brand-new, bright green Joost shirts. The audience in Leiden was the best I've ever had on a run, proving that it's really not the quantity, it's the quality.

We had two teams running in the race: Joost is Running Free (Aldrik Frick, Allan Beaufour, Henk Uittenbogaard, Jim Ley, Mark Duivesteijn, Ruud Tromp and Wilma Tromp) and Joost is Running Wild (Bas Hoogedoorn, Ed Kikkert, Jan van der Zwet, Rick van der Zwet, Sander van der Zon and me (but I ran the whole marathon)) ... and we finished 13th and 23rd out of 45 total teams (Kyle Forster and Jen Trickett also ran the race, but signed up too late to join the business teams). We thought our results were marvelous, especially since we were not really competing.

The feeling after the finish cannot be described in words. Plenty of personal records were broken, and the people that gathered on a terrace after the run were a bunch of utterly satisfied, cheerful runners and colleagues, who really deserved their beers!

Congratulations everyone, well done ... and thanks to the colleagues who came to support us, took pictures and shared the excitement with us. We are already looking forward to next year, now that our pains and aches have fainted away.

ed. note: Check out pictures from the event here, here and here.