A tough course in beautiful surroundings. This is how winner Wouter Baas from Meteren, Gelderland, described the Boscross marathon. He returned home with a beautiful bouquet of flowers and eternal fame.
The Boscross does not have a big prize pool. A beautiful bouquet of flowers awaits the winners of one of the four distances and that’s it. Why do people run, sometimes for hours, through the Drents-Friese Wold over narrow paths, hills and sand? And through mud; yes, sometimes even through puddles of water? The answer is simple: participation results in enjoyment of nature; in the eyes of most runners, more important than finishing at the front.
Dry weather
The Boscross celebrated its 21st edition on Saturday. Eighty runners had reported their arrival in advance. Another fifty arrived on Saturday morning. The majority of these showed up spontaneously due to the predicted dry weather. As always, four distances were on the program: 10.5; 21.1; 31.7 and 42.2 kilometers. Twenty runners ran the longest distance.
Jan Kooistra announced the names of participants and times from a heated van. De Fries has been involved in the running competitions in Diever from the very beginning. “It started with the Brinklopen more than forty years ago. In Diever they wanted to organize this and because my wife and I were at a neighboring campsite, they asked us for help,” the board member of the Sports Association Friesland recalled. The Brinklopen are still there in the summer and the village now also has three marathons every year.
canceled three times
One of which is the Boscross on the second Saturday in December. After three cancellations in a row – corona and no permit, because the course went through protected nature – the time had finally come again. Wouter Baas clocked a winning time of 3 hours, 9 minutes and 54 seconds on the 42.195 meters. A few seconds after his finish it started to rain. So he told his story in the group accommodation where the registration had taken place.
“It was largely through forest and a lot of sand. It was tough. But it was the same lap four times. Then you know the lap and you know what to pay attention to on difficult parts,” he said.
Baas was immediately followed by Bob Leentjens from Onna, more than 10 minutes later. Bob van der Weg from Rohel came third, more than 16 minutes behind the winner. This time there was a participant: Corine Dieterman from Scheemda, her finishing time was 5 hours and 5 minutes.