Six members of LBAC made the trip last weekend to Amsterdam to take part in the 36th running of Holland's second largest marathon. The race is half the size of the Rotterdam version that happens each spring, but has the added benefits of less crowded streets, less chance of hot weather and all the other benefits that Amsterdam has to offer.

The six who decided to take on the race all had different reasons for running and various levels of experience. Following calamitous attempts at two of her three previous marathons Amy Inchley was out to prove that a bit of bad luck wouldn't stop her this time and four hours was well within her reach. Andy Inchley had taken 4.5 years to bury the memory of his last marathon disaster and really wanted a time with a "2" at the start.

New member Tash Andrews had been restricted in the training she had done and had picked up a bad cold a week before and so anything near four hours would be great. Joe Hurley had nothing to prove after having done dozens of the things, but a 3.15 qualifying time for London would be nice. Chris Norman dreamed of a sub-3 time, but on debut, the biggest challenge is just to get around the course and not take twice as long for the second half, which many before him had done. Finally Pete Mackrell was out to prove his 2.53 of last year was no fluke at all and wanted a new PB.

With Tash making the trip with friends from BMF and Joe doing his standard last minute effort, the other four left very early on Friday for a flight from Luton and had registered at the small exhibition at the 1928 Olympic Stadium before 10am. A tram ride into the city centre, a little bit of exploring on a boat and meeting up with Andy's cousin Greg who was also running, took up the time before the apartment was ready in the suburbs back near the stadium.

Dinner in the entertainment area of Leidseplein offered everyone a last beer before the day and plenty of opportunity to discuss tactics, plans, weather, chafing and past experiences, before a relatively early night. Saturday passed fairly uneventfully with just a stroll to lunch to stretch the legs and relaxtion in the apartment followed by a large pasta dinner for five lovingly created by Mr Norman and Mrs Inchley.

So the day of reckoning arrived early on Sunday with each going for their own preferred breakfast option at around 6am. A taxi covering the mile and a half to the start seemed a little excessive, but we were on holiday so why not? The rituals of checking GPS watches, hydrating with energy drinks, four trips to the toilet and untying and retying of laces all took place before the regulation pre-race club photo with Joe and the scrum to enter the stadium where the race starts.

Amy made her way to pen D with Andy praying for no bad luck this time around as the four boys went off to pen B on the stadium's back straight. Eventually, as is the case with all big city marathons, the gun went, everyone cheered and nobody moved! Then gradually, people edged forward and the boys were all over the start line in 40 seconds. Cousin Greg had sneaked up to the front and shouted as we ran past him after half a mile as he settled into his own pace. Pete, clearly was not going to hang around and was away from Chris and Andy within the first mile as Joe tucked in a little way behind.

Amy took about 4 minutes to get over the start line while Tash had decided to start near the back and the gun had gone nearly seven minutes earlier before she joined the race formally. From here it's probably easier to write from each individual perspective………

The Tale of Sir Peter

Having run a smidgen under 2.54 at Abingdon last year, Pete had nothing really to prove but with training having gone well he was hoping that given a fair wind he would be near to 2.50, which no LBAC runner has beaten for the best part of twenty years.

The busy start which is pretty unavoidable held Pete up a little in the early stages, but after the first couple of kilometres he settled into an average pace of around 6.33 for the first half which took him through 13.1 in 1:25:46. He was perfectly placed for another PB but needed to run a big negative split to get under 2:50. However, he was still feeling pretty fresh and so upped his pace just a touch to around 6.15's which was edging him ever closer to his target.

With around four miles to go as the route came back through the city, Pete's relentless pace slipped just a little and he ducked back up to 6.40's, but was still overtaking almost everyone around him as the familiar stadium came into sight. The final half lap of the track saw him finish really strongly in 265^th position (out of 9600) and a fantastic time of 2:50:44 which is the fastest by an LBAC runner since the early 90's.

The Tale of Lady Amy

Cancelled races, and rogue water bottles are the story of Amy's marathon career so far, with one challenging trip around Abingdon offering her the 4:07 PB that she was out to beat in Amsterdam. She felt her training had gone as well as it had for London, but there was no twenty degrees of heat this time and less than a third of the numbers getting in the way so positivity was the order of the day.

As with everyone, Amy's start was slowed by the number of people but not too dramatically and she found herself comfortably inside her target pace of 8.15's very early on. In fact her 5K splits between 5K and 30K were all within 13 seconds of each other as the miles and kilometres just kept churning by. At one stage early on the route doubled back past itself and she exchanged greetings with all the other Buzzards.

A few brief chats with various others of the 3000 brits in the race helped the time pass as she went through half way in under 1:47 and felt comfortable right up to 32K. At this stage, the legs started to tire somewhat and the pace dropped a little, but the father-in-law's mantra of two 10 miles and a 10K kept her going on, together with the target times of a couple of other people!

As she approached the finish, the K's were getting longer and longer but at no stage did she stop and the time built up in the first three quarters gave her a big buffer. With a final unheard shout from Andy and Pete willing her into the stadium, she crossed the finish line in the second fastest time ever by an LBAC lady in 3:36:42 to a huge amount of relief and delight.

The Tale of Sir Joseph

Joe has done plenty of marathons in the past, including a fair few well under 3 hours but as a V50, he's not quite up to the speed of his former glories and with two Ironman races under his belt this year, a mere marathon was surely a walk in the park. having come out on the Saturday and staying on the opposite side of town to the others, he was not spotted until just before the start, but proudly stripped down to club kit for the compulsory photo and joined the other three boys in pen B.

Whilst Joe has done the London marathon on numerous occasions, he was not in possession of a qualifying time for 2013 having suffered with a number of different injuries and so had in his mind that it would be nice to get under 3.15 which is the "good for age" time for 41-59 year olds.

A steady start saw him averaging over 7.30 per mile which was not quite quick enough and by half way he had picked his pace up to 7.28 which saw him go through in 1:37:59, which meant that he had to run a minute quicker in the second half than the first in order to make it.

For those who are not too familiar with marathons, a negative split is something of a holy grail. There is the occasional person who achieves it regularly, but most never do as it means running a second half marathon faster than the first and generally you're starting to tire quite a lot.

With this in mind, Joe increased his pace a little just after half way and did his fastest part of the race up to 10K to go. At this point, his pace started to slip just slightly and it was very close as to whether he could hold on for sub 3:15. As the 40K marker eventually went passed, he struck out for home and picked it up again to cover the last 2.2K in just over ten minutes. He crossed the line and the clock said 3:15:37, but it had taken him forty seconds to cross the start line and officially Joe ran 3:14;57 and just sneaked in by a breath.

We are sure that this was perfectly planned, but never found out as he went straight to the pub and by the time the rest were in the city centre he was a broken man who left next day!

The Tale of Lady Tash

Tash was only briefly seen at the start of the race by the rest of the Buzzards as she was guiding her flock of fellow BMF people towards the start line, but as her preperations had been far from ideal she took the sensible option of starting near the back and picking people off.

Once the race started to spread out after a couple of miles, she settled in to a good pace that she knew would get her around the course in under four hours. the question was could she keep it going? After 13 miles it was looking good as she went through half way in 1:56:14, but then gradually the pace dropped a little as the miles wore on. With eight miles to go she was starting to struggle and the finish seemed a long way away, but her strength and experience of her last marathon then started to kick in.

Going through 35K and with just four miles left, the adrenaline started to flow again and she somehow managed to reverse her decline as she picked up the pace to nearly what she was doing in the first half. With two miles left she knew she was going to be close to sub four, and this spurred her on even more as she increased again approaching the stadium and finished in a fantastic 3:58:50.

The Tale of Sir Christopher & his Squire

As our only debutant, Chris was primarily looking to get around the course in one piece, but a reasonable bit of training in recent weeks had seen him sneak in a couple of really long runs and he was hoping to be near three hours. Andy has bored many club members about his various poor marathons in the past and was finally out to prove that he could break three hours and ideally get near to the Inchley family record held by Tom.

Despite everyone saying that they would do their own thing it just happened that Andy and Chris settled in side by side very early on, and a steady start saw them averaging around 6.50 for the first seven miles as they gradually made their way around the course and down the long stretch of canal out of town and into the greener areas of the suburbs.

The pace increased from mile 8 by just a few seconds so that when they went through half way at 1:29:14 they had a few seconds in hand for three hours, but they could be easily lost in one bad mile and Andy was well outside the 2.56 he would love. So once again the pace increased by just a touch as 6.40's became 6.35's and Andy edged away from Chris just after 16 miles.

Chris then tagged on to a couple of chaps from Tonbridge Wells and continued to run strongly with them until around 22 miles in the section nearest to the city centre where cramp started to affect him and he had to stop a few times to massage his leg, but in between stops was still doing around 7mpm. This continued for the remainder of the race until he gratefully crossed the finish line in 3:03:26, which is a pretty good debut for someone who started running two years ago!

Andy meanwhile had lost his compadre, but was still feeling fairly good (certainly better than ever before in one of these silly events!) and running strongly at around 6.35 and did his fastest mile of the race after 22! Since around mile 6, not a single person had come past and he was picking off runners with good confidence even though he slowed slightly in the final few miles he never went over 7mpm and ran the second half two minutes quicker than the first to finish in 2:56:27!

The first text message that came through was a very generous brother informing him that Andy's time was seven seconds faster! That may not be the end of the battle though….!

 And the rest…..

Andy's cousin Greg (who some of you know) ran a 20 minute PB in his 23rd marathon to do 3:36 as well but didn't see Amy at all!

We then went to the pub for three days and drank a lot of beer!

The race is a flat one and not so pressurised or crowded as London but still offers a good atmosphere and you don't get overtaken by Elvis after 23 miles either! If you are looking for an autumn marathon abroad then we'd definitely recommend it.