This time my blog is in English. There is a numerous amount of publicity in Dutch about Maarten van der Weijden’s second try to swim nonstop 200 km, but in English not too much. So I am planning to give updates about this extreme long swimtrip along 11 cities in the Netherlands.

I will give the English updates through Facebook Live. Especially for all our Open Water loving friends all over the world. And you can ask questions then also. Maybe you already have questions, you can put them in the commend below. But if you want to see everything live, then you can click here to go to Dutch livestreaming of NOS tv-station .

But what and why is Maarten van der Weijden going to do?

He is going to do a second attempt to swim a famous Dutch skating route of 200 km. This loop goes along eleven cities where craziness of masses of people and festivities are to cheer on Maarten. This ’11 cities tour’ is very prestigious to skate, bike, walk,  row, canoe, kayak and swim by relay. But to swim solo nobody has ever done. Last year Maarten had to give up after 163 kilometers (124,5 miles), after 55 hours of swimming. Ofcourse they researched what happened, learned from it and now there are changes made. These are:

• do the distance in 4 days instead of 3 days
• so he can sleep more or longer on his airbed on the water when he needs it
• the time of the year now with the shortest nights Juli 21 – 24 instead of end of August. So more light, more people, more warmth
• new wetsuit with more protection against the water and better floating in legs and hips and a zipper for pooing (although he didn’t have to go last year)
• probably warmer water
• eat more frequently every 20 minutes instead of every 30
• also eat warm meals every day
•  Lots of people will join him during the swim. In every city contestants can join a distance of 500 to 2 km. There even is a group who will swim 2 km from every city (so they do 11 x 2 km). Instead of no one joining at all, last year the water was lightly polluted

Very accurate preparation !

And then the why. The main goal is to raise as much money as possible for research for cancer medicines. Last year he raised 5 million euro!!! for the Dutch Cancer Society. This year Maarten personally choose 11 cancer researches and later added 2 more. So all the money will go to those instances right away. Maarten himself will get nothing of that amount. He will earn his part with all the publicity around it also to pay for all this.

Well here is the planned timetable (ofcourse European time) of coming through the cities:

Well any way he will start in a few hours. The whether is very nice. Maybe Sunday and Monday too warm? We will see what happens then. Maybe he can remove a wetsuit or change. Changing can be risky because the skin is very week and thin. Let’s hope everything will go allright.

So if you want you can follow my FACEBOOK LIVE   (by clicking in the right corner if you are watching it, you will get a signal). Or else you can follow the live stream of Dutch tv station NOS

Go Strong!

Monique