Alex Reuneker

Tijdens het ontbijt in het B&B in Schoorl, Hoeve te Gast, voorafgaand aan de Groet uit Schoorl Run afgelopen weekend, zaten we in een gezellige gezamenlijke ruimte. Het ontbijt was erg lekker en het gezelschap bleek uit lopers en op andere wijze bij de wedstrijd betrokken gezelschap vooral medaillegraveerders, te bestaan. Er was dus meer dan genoeg gespreksstof voor handen.

Een van de andere gasten bleek Maurice Winterman te zijn, de man die met zijn Jones Counter officiële parcoursmetingen doet, onder andere voor de Olympische Spelen in Parijs (2024) en, getuige zijn verhalen aan de ontbijttafel, laatst nog voor de halve marathon van Dubai, die, net als de Groet uit Schoorl Run, op zondag 8 februari 2026 plaatsvond. Ik herinnerde me het onderstaande stuk in de NRC waarin hij zijn werk toelicht.

Interview met Maurice Winterman in NRC (10 augustus 2024)

Het was leuk details te horen over het meten en daar eens, direct bij de bron, vragen over te kunnen stellen. Ik stelde wat vragen naar aanleiding van mijn 'ijkingen' van mijn loopband in de garage; de metingen weken toch wel aardig af van de cijfers die de loopband toont. Op zich is dat een bekend fenomeen, maar toch. Maurice vertelde, toen ik vroeg naar marges, dat bij een officiële marathonparcoursmeting als marge één meter per kilometer wordt aangehouden. Stel dus dat je de ideale lijn volgt, dan zou je aan het einde van de marathon niet 42.195 meter, maar 42.237 meter hebben gelopen. Niet per se praktisch toepasbare kennis voor lopers, maar wel erg interessant en dat al tijdens het ontbijt!

How to run a track marathon without an athletics track around? Number 2 in the 'doing crazy stuff' category: this Saturday, 7 February 2026, I went out early in the morning to do the 42K long run in preparation of the Zestig van Texel (60K). Of course I smuggled that 200m in to make it a marathon distance.

My wife ran the 30K Groet uit Schoorl run the day after in preparation of the Rotterdam Marathon in April. We had to leave somewhat early on Saturday, to make sure our son could still get his much needed sleep in the nice B&B we booked, Hoeve te Gast, around lunch time. It therefore was especially helpful to go for an early run today, although the initial plan was to do my long run in Schoorl – it is so beautiful out there! However, that would require even more planning, and it would have to be later in the afternoon. I find that suboptimal to say the least, because I know I'd be dreading it all morning.

The long runs for the Zestig van Texel are getting really long now, and I feel I have to keep things fun and a bit crazy. As the treadmill marathon two weeks ago was a fun experiment, I thought I'd do another somewhat crazy challenge. So, as I want to do a marathon on an athletics track someday in the future, but I don't have a track really close to home, I thought I could do approximately 105 laps of 400m around the house, as I have used this 'track' before to do a test run for the beer mile last year.

A lot of laps around the house add up to 42.2K (for privacy, I blackened out the street names)

It's kind of nice that I have exactly a 400 lap around the house. This seemed like a fun challenge, it was convenient to not waste time, and, certainly not unimportantly, I could easily set up food and drinks in my garden. As I started before 7 am, it was also nice to see the sun rise and the neighbourhood awaken. (Some neighbours must have found it a bit weird to see me pass their house many, many times.) It was an efficient training, and although I won't be doing this again anytime soon, I really, thoroughly enjoyed it; it was fun to count laps instead of kilometers (I set auto lap on my Garmin at 400m, which worked quite well – I had to take the opposite street sometimes to correct for some cut-offs, but that was totally fine), it felt easy to maintain good endurance pace, and I felt like I still had a decent amount of energy left at the end. To prevent problems from the 105.5 x four corners, I changed direction each 25 laps, which also helped mentally – I counted laps until change of direction, which felt easier than having to think about doing more than 100 laps. This was, apart from the physical training, also a really good mental training, I think. I did not listen to any music and I had no other distractions than coming up with new counting games along the way.

The final figures

For those interested, here are all the laps.

105 laps (and a bit...)

All in all, this 105.5 x 400m marathon gave me a really good feeling and upon completing the 105.5 laps (42.23K in 03:08:16; 4:28 min/km), I could only smile. Then, head of in kind of a rush to the shower and off to Schoorl!

A convenient place to store some food and drinks

Note 1: The real initial plan was to run the Coast Marathon Nationaal Park Hollandse Duinen that Saturday, which seemed like a good preparation for the Zestig van Texel. However, it was not only a hassle to organise in the same weekend as the Groet uit Schoorl run, but I found it really too expensive. Not only the ticket was too expensive for my taste (85 euro), but after clicking through numerous screens and filling in a lot of forms, I also had to buy a national park ticket (or whatever it was) and an expensive parking ticket. That just did it for me – running does really seem too get expensive lately and I found this too much for what is was.

Note 2: As our son sleeps in the same room, we went to bed very early on Saturday. I woke up very early too, so after some tossing and turning, I decided to slip on the running shoes around 6 am and go out for a recovery run, which I would have done in the afternoon at home otherwise. Although it was still dark and there was little lighting on the streets and cycling paths, I really enjoyed running here, and the legs felt a bit stiff after yesterday's marathon, but nothing noteworthy and that gave me a confidence.

Groeten uit Groet ('Greetings from Groet')

The surroundings were beautiful, very quite still and the second half of the 10K run, I ran on the route my wife would run later that day. It's always fun to see the barriers on the roads, the brand advertisements and kilometer signs along the way!

On Friday 23 January, 2026, I ran a marathon on my treadmill in preparation for a 60K ultra-marathon (the Zestig van Texel). As I was at home with my 1.5 year old son, who I could keep monitored while he was asleep this way, this long run had to be done on the treadmill in my garage.

Most of my long runs I run at 4:20-4:30 per kilometer, but I thought it would be a 'fun' challenge to run a sub-3 hour marathon on a treadmill once, requiring a pace of at least 4:16 per kilometer. Will I make it within 3 hours?

For those interested in doing a treadmill marathon themselves, or those who just want to see an admittedly somewhat crazy experiment, I have made a summary video (<5 minutes) showing running footage with pace, distance and other details overlayed, and some technical details, lap times, evaluation et cetera. Watch it at https://youtu.be/ZMJDv8gvqso.

It was a fun experiment, but an experiment at that. I don't plan doing another treadmill marathon soon.

Details and links

• Treadmill: Finnlo Technum IV
• Shoes: Hoka Carbon X2
• Watch: Garmin Fenix 6S Pro
• Heart-rate strap: Garmin HRM-Pro Plus
• Camera: GoPro Hero 3 Black Edition
• Speed/distance registration: North Pole Engineering Runn Sensor
• Software for data overlay: https://fitoverlay.com
• Music: Motivation in Motion, https://www.pixabay.com (royalty free)
• Treadmill calibration: https://www.reuneker.nl/files/treadmill
• Speed/pace calculations: https://www.reuneker.nl/files/runcalc