A movie that ends well

It is 16 October last year, the Sunday of the TCS Amsterdam Marathon. As the runners trickle in, Maxime is covered by a cooling blanket and ice cubes in the VUmc. Next to her bed is a ventilator. For a while she has been on a ventilator. It marks the seriousness of her situation. Later, she is told she has had a heat stroke. In the weeks that follow, she will read a lot about it, about what happened to her in the last kilometre of the half marathon - her very first. Now it is a matter of cooling down, just until it gives her chills. It takes a while, because inside it is still firmly overheated. Only a few hours later she is allowed to go home, realising that things could have turned out much worse.

'I am not an extremely fanatical runner, but I was well trained,' Maxime looks back on the Sunday afternoon in Amsterdam. 'I started running in the corona lockdown. That went well. Then I started to build it up. After my first 10 kilometres, the Singelloop in my hometown Utrecht, I thought it was time for a half marathon.' She chose Amsterdam.

It is not that warm when she cycles to the train station on the morning of the 16th. About 17 degrees, pleasant late summer weather. She is used to warmer weather: for a while she lived in Ghana and ran there. On her way to Amsterdam, she thinks about the training schedule she has been following for the last few months. She had temporarily given up alchohol. In the morning, she ate some banana pancakes. 'I had read that's good for you,' says Maxime. 'The night before, I had also eaten a big plate of pasta.'

Her friends are also running in Amsterdam. They are a bit faster and therefore start in the front start area. A bit behind them, Maxime is still suffering from the nerves that already affected her on the train. 'I noticed my heart rate was around 110.' Before the starting sign is given, she goes to the toilet about four times just to be sure. The first few kilometres go smoothly. During her first official 10 kilometres in Utrecht, she had run a pace of 5:30 minutes per kilometre, now she is around 6 minutes. A bit too fast perhaps, but it's going well, so she keeps up the pace. Along the way, she regularly takes a sip of water, or one of the gels she brought along. 'I had trained for that too.' At kilometre 12, the wind suddenly picks up. 'The man with the hammer,' says Maxime. 'I really thought: oh god, I want to stop. But at the same time, I absolutely did not want to. I lowered my pace and drank some water. The kilometres passed slowly. And then the Vondelpark came in sight. That's where it got really tough. But I thought: keep going, you're almost there.'

Remarkably, she no longer sweats. It is part of the symptoms of heatstroke, she learns later, in which organs in the overheated body fail piece by piece. Her skin no longer produces moisture. While running, Maxime does not dwell on it, her thoughts are on the finish line. Her legs get heavier and heavier, until they can do no more. A kilometre before the line, Maxime collapses. 'It felt a bit like I was drunk, like I had no more control over my legs,' she says. A man helps her up and runs with her for a bit, but again things go wrong. 'All of a sudden I just fell down, I literally couldn't stand on my legs.'

Around her, a group of concerned fellow runners forms. She immediately spits out the water she is initially offered. When medicals arrive, the seriousness of the situation becomes apparent. In haste, they throw a bucket of canal water over her. Her clothes are cut out and her body covered with cooling blankets. Maxime can only vaguely remember. 'I remember being mostly worried about where my earplugs were. No idea why.' A Belgian woman, whom she will contact later, offers to call family or friends. She gets hold of an already-finished friend, who turns around at the line and runs the last 500 metres in reverse. The crowd shouts at her for going the wrong way.

On the way to the hospital, in the ambulance, Maxime's realisation of her precarious condition sinks in. 'I couldn't feel my body anymore. And not once did the paramedic say "it will be fine" or anything like that. That told me it wasn't all right. I still thought: if I die now, at least I had a nice life. But right after that, I decided I wouldn't give up. In the films, things always end badly then. I had to fight, stay awake and watch my breathing.'

At the hospital, where her parents join her, everything is pulled out: cooling blankets, ice cubes, a ventilator and a respirator. 'When we arrived, my body had a temperature of 41.8 degrees,' says Maxime. 'I heard later that at 42 degrees it would have been done, so I was really on the edge.' Not only her skin, but also her kidneys stopped working at the Vondelpark, it would turn out at the hospital. She was lucky, Maxime realises. Afterwards, she notices that her heart rate had been far too high on the way: averaging around 185. But what exactly went wrong, she still does not know.

It takes some time for her body to recover. The first week she does nothing, then she starts walking carefully. Every half kilometre, she sits down for a while. It is only after a month that she starts running again and joins her hockey team. Since the Mizuno Half Marathon, she has been more careful. 'I now run by heart rate and no longer just look at my time. I have learned to listen to my body.'

Maxime has now run her first half marathon, in The Hague in March this year. 'When I crossed the finish line, there was a lot of release. I'm not that dramatic, but I did have to cry for a while. It felt good that I had now made it.' It will not be her last half marathon, says Maxime. She is going for a retake. Next October, she will once again catch the train to Amsterdam.