After next weekend, Jaap van den Berg, 60, (not shown here, see details below), from Soest, Utrecht will set quite an impressive personal record: he will be the first Dutchman to run all European marathons. After next weekend, as he needs to run a marathon in Vatican City. “The marathon in Vatican City will be my 55th country in Europe, and then I will have done all European countries and I’m really proud of that,” Van den Berg said.

He started running in 1983 in Amsterdam and after that, the rest was just more running. “The Netherlands is beautiful, but as a boy, I always wanted to see the world, so that’s why.” Van den Berg trains three to four times a week, with his wife, something they have in common.

After Vatican City, he’s off to Palestine, making it the 80th country in the world he’s visited. It’s not about winning marathons for him, it really is about the travel.

(Link: rtvutrecht.nl, photo by Branko Collin of Kenyans Lucas Rotich and John Mwangangi at the Amsterdam marathon of 2014)