Leah Roberts

Training Continues

Sunday 26th Apr 2026

The 30 van Zandvoort was incredible! It was challenging in ways I didn’t anticipate, primarily because I decided to wear a brand new pair of shoes (sorry toes!), but the views were amazing and the vibes were great! It was fun to see so many passionate and decorated walkers! The route took us through the beach, dunes, forests, estates, and city. We had great weather, though it was very windy at the beach. I posted some pictures on this page from the walk if you want to see a little bit.

Mike and I are training more and more together on the long and easy runs. He’s great at keeping me on target for pace and it’s nice having a buddy for the early morning runs. I completed my farthest ever run last week at 10.5 km. Mike found us a nice run through Vondelpark to Rembrandtpark and finally past Erasmuspark, finishing on our favorite stretch of canal for strolling.

I’ll be officially starting training for the half marathon in the next two weeks! So far I have just been focusing on training for the 5k and then went straight into a 10k training plan, but I’ll be wrapping that up about a month before the actual race so I’ll pick up the half plan to have more time to prepare for it. It’s so crazy that 6 months ago I was watching runners at the NYC Marathon just totally amazed that people could do something like that and thinking it would never be possible for me to now be able to go out and feel like I could just keep going for hours. I’m not there yet, but I can see it in reach now. It’s funny because I feel proud of myself right now, but not nearly as proud as I felt for all those runners. I hope to someday feel as proud of myself as I did for them.

Running into Springtime

Sunday 8th Mar 2026

Training continues as Spring approaches. I competed in a 5k race around Groningen in early February. It was foggy and crowded but I felt really great racing. I finished 295th overall, 7th in my category, and 1st out of the Americans!

One Month Down!

Saturday 31st Jan 2026

I'm now one month into training for the half marathon and have one week to go to the 5k night race I signed up for in Groningen (in the northern part of the Netherlands). I'm really enjoying the process and the fact that I've managed to avoid shin splints this long! I've been doing most of my runs on a treadmill but have slowly started adding outside runs to my routine as I get a better feel for the various training paces.