Marathon runner Mikky Keetels wants to run her furthest distance ever in Breda

She works full-time as a flight attendant, studies journalism and also wins marathons in top time. Mikky Keetels (27) from Schijndel is a multi-talent. Barely a month ago she was the first Dutch woman to finish the Rotterdam Marathon and on Sunday she won the Vancouver Marathon. Next weekend she will take on a new challenge: she hopes to run her furthest distance ever at the Wings for Life World Run in Breda.

When you talk to Mikky, you wonder where she gets the time and energy to combine all these things. After a long day at work, she arrives at her destination with jet lag and opens her laptop to do work for her internship. Then she puts on her running shoes and runs tens of kilometers. What stands out when she tells this? The enthusiasm radiates and that perhaps makes this runner so special.

“I always see running as a kind of adventure. Put on some music and just let everything go. I think it’s a kind of yoga, relaxation.” Because she flies all over the world, you can say that her training sessions are really an adventure.

“In Mexico I do a kind of altitude internship. In Salt Lake City I walked somewhere between the white mountain peaks. And in Kuala Lumpur I almost fell into a hole because there was a hole in the ground,” she says laughing. And with that, her work seems to support her running career.

In just a few years she has grown from amateur to top athlete. As a result, she now dares to dream big. “The Olympic Games are now my goal. We are therefore looking at how I can organize my life in such a way that this is possible.” That’s probably why she’s going to put her work as a flight attendant on the back burner. And she has almost received the paper for her studies.

With the Vancouver Marathon still in her legs, she will run the Wings for Life World Run in Breda this Sunday, May 10. But she hasn’t decided yet how she will walk it. “We are still trying to decide what we are going to do.” It is clear that she will start with a group of fast men.

And that’s where the fun radiates again. “We are going to try to get as far as possible. But it is also just fun because it is a kind of team task. And I am really curious what it is like to run without a finish line!” During the event, participants are overtaken by a moving finish line, the so-called ‘Catcher Car’.

One thing is certain: Mikky goes to extremes. In any case, she wants to run further than she has ever done: 42.195 kilometers, the marathon distance. She can do this for 3 hours and about 6 minutes until the moving finish line is close on her heels. For comparison: she won the Rotterdam marathon in 2:30.42 and the Vancouver marathon in 2:33.01.

Last year, the Polish Patrycja Talar was overtaken by the Catcher Car.