About Me

Hello! Thanks for ending up on this page, appaerently you are interested in who I am and what this site is about.

I am quite sure that this section of the website will grow and change since my life is not static and therefore neither will this section of this website be. But let’s get started with my story.

Who am I?
Meet Joost Mulders, born in 1976, living in Utrecht in the center of the Netherlands together with my girlfriend Astrid and Mickey the cat (or as he probably sees it Mickey is living in Utrecht with Astrid and myself as his pets).

So this is us. Astrid, Mickey and me.

An endurance lifestyle
In an interview in a YouTube video I once heard an ultrarunner describe himself as an endurance athlete.
Just like me this guy was not a professional athlete but an enthousiast running long distance races.

However when people ask me what it is what I do I don’t feel comfortable to describe myself as any kind of athlete, after calling myself a runner as a response to this questions for a while I came up with a better term. Since running is definitely not the only sport I do I think endurance enthousiast better describes what I do.

So how did I became this what I call an endurance enthousiast?

I was never into sports, from a young age on I preferred spending my time in front of the TV or behind a computer screen. Eating healthy was also not really on the top of my priority list. Eventually this resulted in me gaining more and more weight, ending up over 120 kg when I was 25 years old.

And that’s when it was enough, feeling unhappy with myself I started changing my lifestyle. Exercise became part of my daily routine. Starting with the stationary bike and later on running. Next to that I was able to change my eating habbits and I managed to drop my weight from 120 kg to 70 kg in less than a year.

Back then exercise was part of my life, but it wasn’t the core of my lifestyle. Cycling, fitness and running was a means to stay fit and keep my weight stable. Perfectly fine for that period in my life.

But then it turned around, or to put it otherwise, I allowed it to turn around. Due to all kinds of reasons within my private life I derailed, exercising less and less until I stopped completely and falling back into an unhealthy lifestyle. Watching the scale climb back to 120 kg step by step got me depressed but I could not put myself to change things…. not yet.

After a number of years trapped in this cage, I busted out and found my passion while doing so. Initially picking up running again just to get back to a healthy lifestyle my aim was to be able to run a 10 km at a comfortable pace. Things went a bit differently.

Picking up running again in the beginning of 2014 I was running that 10 km comfortably and I completed a 10 km race together with Astrid. And then the question was: “what’s next?”. And so I started moving from one challenge to the other trying to find my limitations. From the 1/2 marathon to trailrunning, running in the French Alps, running a marathon and then the first ultra distances. And I have yet to find those limitations I was looking for.

Whithin a year I moved from running a few times a week on a 10 km course to running ultra distances, both in training runs and in races. And instead of seeing exercise as a necesarry evil as I did in the past, it is now part of who I am.

I enjoy exploring my limits and stretching them. Endurance sports are my way of moving myself beyond the limitations I have put in my mind. I consider it the ultimate freedom, running down a trail, racing down the road, climbing up a hill, it’s not about the activities itself it is about the freedom experienced by doing it.

I feel blessed to be able to live this life and even more to have found the love of my life Astrid, who joins me in many of these adventures.

What’s this website
I created this website to share my passion for endurance sports. For me this is mainly about trailrunning. So here you will fine blog posts, videos and event reports.

But besides trailrunning you can also find me on a bicycle, road running or hiking and as such you could see those activities or anything else related to my life and lifestyle on this website.

My day job
Since endurance sports only cost money and don’t provide an income (at least not for me) I also have a day job as a manager of a software development department of an IT company in Rotterdam.

Combining a busy job with the amount of training that I put in is not an easy task and sometimes makes me feel like leading a double life. Quite often I have already ran 20+ kilometers before the workday starts and if I didn’t it is quite possible that I traveled the 70 km commute to the office by bicycle.

For now endurance sports are a hobby that I need to fit in around my normal day schedule, but who knows what the future will bring.