11-city-tour (fever) in Holland 200 km. After 16 ½ hours I got my 11-city cross on 21 februari 1985. Double Dutch

February 11, 2007 at 11:39 AM

Since long ice in the Netherlands is a rarity. When we have a cold winter everybody wants to skate. You can see this on old paintings of the Dutch painter Hendrick Avercamp (1585-1634).

In Holland just like Finland there is a lot of open water and lakes, where people can skate long tours. The most important tour and competition is the 11-city Tour in the Northern part of the Netherlands Frysland. Here the dates of the 15 11-city-tours of the last century:
1th, (2 januari 1909), (7 februari 1912), (27 januari 1917), (12 februari 1929), (16 december 1933), (30 januari 1940), (6 februari 1941), (22 januari 1942), (8 februari 1947), (3 februari 1954), (14 februari 1956), (18 januari 1963), (21 februari 1985), (26 februari 1986) , last 15th 11-citytour (4 januari 1997)

route of the 11-city tour. In the left the 11-citycross you get for finishing before 24.00 midnight
I took part in 1985 and finished after 16 ½ hours of skating 10 minutes before the deadline 24.00 hour that day. In the end my ankles were so weak that I only could stand on my left foot and stepped with my right foot. It was the hardest day in my life. People of the army, who helped the organisation that day, brought me to my guest-address on a stretcher in the starting city, because I was total loss and had no energy to go home on my own. One week I had very thick ankles.

11-city tour skaters
The winner of the competitionskaters only needs 6 ½ hours for the same 200 km.

competitionskaters
In 1986 I was skiing in Austria and in 1997 I was lucky to get a starting chance after the lottery, because the race is too popular and too many people wants to skate that legendary race. But instead to 1985 when I could start early I only had 14 hours from my startingtime 10.00 till 24.00 midnight and that was not enough for a slow skater like me. Every time in a strong winter people in the Netherlands get the so called 11-city-tour fever, and get very nervous and excited. (I also get this fever)
On the Weissensee in Austria there is nearly every year enough ice to organize this 200 km race, EXCEPT this year for the first time, because of the altitude of the lake 960 km above sea level. My aim was this year to TRY to skate again 200 km (Dutch people have a sort of obsession with this distance) on the Weissensee, but you gets much less time. Everybody starts at 7.00 hours and before 17.00 you have to start your last round of 16km or 25 km. So you need 18,4 or 17,5 km/hours as average speed including rest. Some tourskaters skate this year unofficial 15 rounds of 7 km (100 km) or even 28 rounds (200km) for their own, because of our 200 km obsession.
The website of the Winter Marathon Foundation http://62.50.1.68/sitewide/english.asp
Webcam Weissensee http://msplins01.bon.at/weissensee.com
maratonspeedskating Dutch website : http://www.marathonschaatsen.nl
The Alternative 11-City Race
The Alternative 11-City Race has been a Dutch tradition since 1974. The original version in Friesland, the most Northern province of the Netherlands, goes back many centuries. It is an ice skating race over 200 kilometres, through 11 towns linked by canals, rivers, lakes and a part of the former Zuiderzee.
Skating ice found abroad
As the Dutch waters don't freeze over so easily, the Dutch started looking for alternatives in other Countries. In 1974 a race over 200 kilometres was held in Lillehammer, Norway. In 1976 the race was held in Lahti Finland. The race stayed in Finland for a couple of years and was held on different lakes. In 1983, '84, and '85 the Marathon over 200 kilometres was held in the USA and Canada (Vermont and Ottawa). In 1985 and '86 it was held in Poland, and in 2000 the race moved to Akan in Japan.
Weissensee
Since 1989 the 'Stichting Winter Marathon' (Winter Marathon Foundation) organizes the race on a beautiful, 11 kilometres long mountain lake in Austria in the wonderful village Weissensee. The start and finish line are at the foot of the ski-slopes. There are three versions of the Alternative 11-City Race: the race for professionals, the fast amateur tour, and the recreational tour. The event is always held in the last week of January or in the beginning of February. Around 6,500 Dutch people and a few hundred people from other nations meet each year at Weissensee.
This year 250 skaters will skate in Mongolie on a frozen lake, between China and Russia, as you can read on the website of the Winter Marathon Foundation. Now there are plans in Holland with several artificial 400 meter ovals to make an artificial ice route of 5 km!!, because of the lack of enough cold below 0 Celsius to skate on nature-ice. Perhaps now you understand the expression: “double Dutch.” As you can understand from this story and the paintings from round 1608 ice-skating is deep in our culture and we have a lot of speedskating Olympic- and worldchampions. American Olympic champions like Chad Hedrick and Shani Davis who are relatively unknown in the U.S.A. are big heroes in our country.

Chad Hedrick a former inline skater

Shani Davis
Sorry I have to stop this entry, because now the World Champions speedskating all round (of course held in the Netherlands)are on the Dutch television. Man have to skate 500, 1500, 50000, 10.0000 metres and woman 500, 1500, 3000, 5000 meters in one weekend and get overall points for those 4 distances.

From Bilbo Prattle
Posted on February 11, 2007 at 6:33 PM

Totally awesome post!

I got fired up and went out onto a large frozen pond yesterday, and made a loop of just over 1 km. I did it three times, and sad to say, I'm not skating like I did 10 years ago on rollerblades! Those guys doing the 200 km are averaging almost 5 km/hour faster than I did for 1 km!

I guess it is time for metto skate more and eat less.

But your post and the photos are very inspiring. I'm going skating in a few minutes in fact.

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11-city-tour (fever) in Holland 200 km. After 16 ½ hours I got my 11-city cross on 21 februari 1985. Double Dutch

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