Walking is okay again, but starting up in the middle of the night was not so smooth anymore. That is what Jos Luten tells us, who runs the Four Days Marches of Nijmegen with a group of ten people from Pessen.
“It hurts now and then, some muscle aches. But we’re running again, we’ve covered the first seventeen kilometers,” he said at eight o’clock this morning. The first blisters are there too, but the first aid still ignores Jos. “When I look around I think: ‘it’s not that bad’, I’ll stick a needle in it myself.”
Yesterday seemed like a piece of cake beforehand. “But I was no longer there last night. I went to bed around half past seven, I think even earlier than the children at home,” laughs Luten. Before going to sleep there is daily contact with the home front. “Just call, also with the children. We get a lot of support from home and from the village.”
On the third day of the Four Days Marches, the caravan first goes to Mook and then crosses the famous or infamous seven hills around Nijmegen. A tough day, which the group started on time. “We get up around a quarter to three in the night to be on time at the Wedren.”
The group of ten runners was split in two this morning. “We are now with six, four are a bit behind.” Fortunately not because they can’t keep up, but because it’s busy. “On those narrow roads it is so busy that overtaking is not always possible. But at the next rest point we wait for each other again.”