Background
Keep on running
History student Dave Boone was second in a 100- kilometre race – but how does he survive eight hours of non-stop running? “Don’t mention the pain, leave that to the Tour de France folks.”
Wednesday 23 November 2011

 “I’m want to do that”, cried Dave Boone to his parents in 2006 when he saw images of coastal marathon in Zeeland on television.

He was seventeen at the time. “They said I couldn’t; I would need training.” He ran the marathon a year later. “I loved every bit of it”. But admittedly, he had underestimated it somewhat. “I managed the whole thing, but it wasn’t really what you would call running anymore.”

After reading the book De mens als duurloper [Man as long-distance runner] by ultrarunner and historian Jan van Knippenberg – “I read it in no-time”- he decided to concentrate on long distances. In 2010, he ran 65 kilometres in Gilze and Rijen and in September he ran 100 kilometres in Winschoten for the first time.

He made a second attempt in September but was forced to give up after sixty kilometres. “My body couldn’t take any more and forty kilometres is too far at the point.”

Recently he took part in the 100 kilometres during the Centennial Deventer. His finishing time, 08:04:41, was a personal record and he came in second.

“You start to feel terrible after fifty kilometres”, says the fifth-year History student, “but you have to get past that, that’s ultrarunning. Don’t mention the pain, leave that to the Tour de France folks. Television only shows pain and suffering but the ultrarunning folk are all too pleased with that.” 

“Because, if you allow yourself to think of that, that’s when you can’t go on”, he adds. “You have a lot of time to think and put things into perspective when you’re running, but if you ask yourself what you’re doing, it’s actually all over. You have just keep running. To me, ultrarunning is persevering when others would say: ‘Now it’s time to call it a day’.

“If you start walking you may as well give up there and then. You often see people do that in marathons. But if you keep going you’ll arrive at a stage when you’ll start to feel more comfortable.”

But wasn’t he completely shattered? “When you reach the finish, you really are very, very tired. I get muscle pain during the race, and my feet still hurt, but it will clear up. You don’t feel happy that you’ve succeeded, only relieved that it’s over.

“Of course, I’m happy that I can run 100 kilometres, but the preparations are actually the most fun: I train six times a week in the summer. When you run, you can organise your thoughts, it gives you some peace.”

Boone intends to keep on running the 100-kilometre races and he has one more ambition besides running the marathon in under two hours.

“Ultrarunners say that there’s only one real race: the Spartathlon in Greece. It’s 246-kilometre race which has to be completed in 36 hours. It crosses mountains, runs along motorways – in that heat. It’s the most important race, like winning the Elfstedentocht [a skating race round eleven Frisian towns].”