According to the Runnes’s World website, “after hanging up his boots last season at Dutch Groningem, the club of his early days, international footballer Arjen Robben has found a new passion: running.
And his past as an elite athlete has helped him find the physical shape to finish his first marathon. It happened this Sunday in Rotterdam, one of the fastest circuits in the world, where he finished the 42,195-meter race in a time of 3 hours, 13 minutes and 40 seconds, in position 1,369.
Robben reached the finish line, but aware that his capacity was for morebecause at the beginning of March he already ran the Haren Half Marathon in a great time of 1:20:37, which presaged a much better time in the long race.
“I realized very quickly that it really wasn’t my day. At one point I had to go for a walk because I had cramps, and then you have to start over. After 30 kilometers, it is no longer enjoyable, it is hell. You think you’ll never do it again, but since you’ve started… but yeah, maybe we’ll do it one more time,” he explained to NOS public television.
The former PSV Eindhoven, Chelsea, Real Madrid or Bayern Munich soccer player, 38 years oldand world runner-up after losing the final with Spain in the 2010 World Cup in South Africa He prepared the challenge together with Erben Wennemars, a former ice speed skater with two Olympic medals in Turin 2006, who already retired at 44 years old, started running marathons in 2010 and has already run twenty. After physically showing him the way, the two of them reached the finish line at the same time.
Runner’s World in the Netherlands recounts that despite the numerous meniscus and cruciate injuries and operations he suffered during his career, Robben maintains the physical tone of when he was a footballer, and in the last year he was finally able to fulfill his desire to ski in Austria and swim an 8 kilometer charity race.