I was a few months shy of 25 when I moved to Holland. Yet in the first few years, I would always be carded if I buy alcohol or cigarette. I don’t remember exactly when they stopped asking for my I.D. but last week at work, I jokingly asked a colleague if I still looked 27 and he looked at me confused and sternly said ‘no”, as if my question was the most bizarre he heard that day.

Eleven years of living in the Netherlands and I barely noticed how time changed. I recently turned 36 and since my immigration, the years have been grinding steadily, albeit boringly consistent. I fell in-love, I migrated, I worked, I amused myself with wine, travel and marathons in between, I bought a house, I started a family and since then life had been about motherhood and working to pay the mortgage, debts and house renovations.

(Don’t worry! This is not a quit-my-job-to-travel-the-world kind of post)

“I didn’t run a marathon this year.” Sometimes I catch myself saying this whenever I’m browsing through race photos on Instagram. Despite the grueling ultra-marathon training I did at the beginning of 2019, it didn’t feel like I’ve been running this year. Because I wasn’t racing.

Something happened while I was running last Saturday. The weather was  abominable for May cold, rainy, sleet and too much wind. I was on my 12th kilometre, listening to Rammstein’s Rammleid when another strong gust of wind almost knocked me down. I got mad, so mad that I was shouting expletives to the air. I hated everything about running, the pain, the long training hours that’s taking me away from my daughter and this disgusting weather.

his is not a success story. This is a did-not-finish (dnf) report. I failed at my first ever attempt at ultramathon. At 47km, after a gruelling 6 hours and 13 minutes, I threw in the towel. But didn’t I already say that when I started writing my Road to Texel series? Did I start this race with failure in mind?

oodness, where has time gone? This month, I woke up to the fact that my kid is officially a toddler, my husband is 11 years older than when I first met him, and sleep is once again cut short due to the day-light-saving time.