Today I bring you the story of Mieke Gorissen
Mieke is a 38 year old Belgian Physics and Maths teacher. In February Mieke said she wanted to run a marathon for funsies and surprised everyone by running the Olympic limit in that race.
Today she ran the Olympic marathon in Tokyo, where her plan was just to finish the marathon and hopefully not finish last. (Especially since it was HOT as hell)
At the finish line she was already crying of joy because she finished the marathon. When she heard from the interviewer she got the 28th place out of 88 candidates, she could not believe it an started crying harder and saying “that’s not possible”.
For an amateur, Mieke her time and perseverance is unbelievable and highlights the beauty of the Olympics. Here’s to you Mieke, a true Olympian!!!
She's a knitter too! Just like Tom Daley. She picked up running in order to keep moving because her hobbies are knitting and reading science books. In 2018 she got a personal trainer to improve her technique on her 10km hobby runs, and turned out to be crazy talented. Her first marathon she had to hand in an "aimed for" time, and she aimed for the Olympic time limit because why not?
She ran far below that limit. Her second ever marathon was this Olympic marathon. And she didn't even put all her time and effort into training, no, she put all her time and effort in the final exams of her high school students. This was very much a side quest. Insane















