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Group photo in Franeker on the evening of day 3 with the heroes of the non-stop SUP 11-City Tour the evening before they started their journey in the dark the following morning"
PerhaPs most imPortantly, this event is known for its feel of ohana family in hawaiian). for five full days, athletes from around the world join a grouP of hard-working volunteers to travel, eat, Paddle, sleeP, and laugh together. each day the grouP grows closer.
I was born and raised in Friesland, the northern province of the Netherlands, where the Eleven Cities Tour happened close to home. Thousands of enthusiasts skated the 220 kilometers through the Eleven Cities in one day. Both the pros and the amateurs would start in the morning, 12 kilometers from my house, and had to make the finish line before midnight. Millions of people would come to Friesland to encourage the ice skaters from early morning until the late and dark hours of the night; the spectating was an entire happening in itself. My family and I would get up early and follow the updates closely by TV and radio until the time was right, and we would head towards the Eleven Cities route by ice-skate to support all our heroes. This event was bigger than anything I had ever been part of as a spectator and admirer. I was in awe and I really wanted to complete this tour one day.
On day 4 there is a spot where you need to take your board out of the water and walk over land for a few meters.
Yet it ended up being the ocean that captured my attention and my passion, not the ice. Windsurfing was my first watersport love, and at ages 15 and 16, I participated in the Windsurfing Eleven Cities Tour, which was sailed over two days. The first year I had to quit due to a lack of wind on the first day. The year after, I completed 195 km but could not finish the final 25 km, again due to a lack of wind and the fact that I would not finish before midnight. This definitely left me with some unfinished Eleven Cities business!
In February 2008, I finally set foot on a stand up paddleboard in the waves of Maui, where I have visited and lived since 1997. I was hooked after one session. I loved the new challenge, the new learning curve, how complete this movement was for my body and mind. Besides playing in the waves, I started doing downwind paddle runs and long distance events such as the Maui to Molokai and Molokai to Oahu.
The combination of doing all these long distance races and also wanting to promote SUP in Holland brought me back to the tour I had not completed yet—The Eleven Cities! This time, I would do it by SUP. I brought my 12’6” from Hawaii to Friesland to first train and then complete a solo trial run of the tour. During one of my long lonely training sessions through the lat- water canals, while ducking bridges and admiring horses and happy cows in the ields, I had a vision of many people from around the world paddling this challenge with me and experiencing my culture from the water.“Could I really make this into an event?” I wondered. Instant tears in my eyes, goosebumps, and a rush of energy immediately answered my question.
Start of the event in Leeuwarden. Paddlers leave the starting line at full power and then ind both their endurance pace and fellow paddlers with a similar pace for the following 5-8 hours of paddling that day.
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