October 21 was a good day for running, with a nice cool morning and with a small chill only later in the day. The nice weather was a piece of good luck since that was the day of the Amsterdam marathon. I would have loved to take part but this year I'm again relegated to the sidelines. I couldn't run the marathon, but I could at least watch and cheer people on.

My first spot was on the Stadionweg, a few kilometres from the start. Here are the leaders as they came by for the first time. For the first time, because the marathon had a short loop at the beginning so runners ran this portion of the Stadionweg twice. They then started to head south towards a beautiful stretch of the Amstel river.





The marathon was not just for the professionals, of course. A lot of regular folks took part as well, as can be seen in the next video. The runners are moving quite fast and looking fit. I moved to the Vondelpark's entrance later in the day to watch runners pass the 39 km mark, and most of them didn't look so enthusiastic anymore. I can understand; I didn't take any photos at that point.




There was also some wackiness. Running a marathon is difficult, but running it while dressed up as a giraffe must be something else.



It was also fun to see many runners wearing flags from their home country. The English, French, Belgians, and (of course) the Danes were out in force. One of my clear memories from the 2005 race was that there were relatively few people watching from the side of the road but many of them were cheering for Denmark!

Emmanuel Mutai from Kenya won the men's race in 2:06.29 and countrywomen MagdalineChemjor won her race with a time of 2:28.16. Twenty six runners clocked in at under 2:20 which I think is extremely fast.