Horns Kirsten has reached her target amount and is ready to run an ultramarathon in Switzerland.

Kirsten Loa of Horn is ready. Tonight, she'll be leaving for Switzerland with her husband, Derek, to run an ultramarathon. In addition to the challenge, Kirsten has tied it to a good cause: a chair for the Deklander Hospital. “It's so nice to help so many people.”

With running as a hobby, Kirsten has done long-distance running in the past. But the ultramarathon – which she is currently running, a 49-kilometre race with an altitude of more than 3,000 metres – is something new for the Horn woman. A tough challenge, for which the mother of two has an additional goal.

“Two years ago, my son Sean and I were hospitalized,” Kirsten explains. While she was diagnosed with puerperal fever, her baby ended up in DeKlander Hospital with jaundice. “It was exciting and intense. But thankfully everything went well. Even then, I had a strong idea that I wanted to give something back for the great care they gave us.

Big donations for the bag chair

Kirsten contacts the medical professionals she knows during her admission. They say they would like a small chair for the hospital ward. The person in these chairs has an ideal position for skin-to-skin contact and there are many health benefits for babies. However, this chair is not reimbursed and there is no money to buy one yourself, which costs several thousand euros.

So I decided to do it. Donation campaign To set up. “I wanted to do something to make this wish come true, so that everyone could benefit from it,” she says. Thanks to donations from family friends and Kirsten’s clients, enough was quickly raised to donate supplies to the hospital to support premature or sick babies.

“Thanks to the Father’s Day campaign with special tiles and the generous donation, we also have enough money to donate the bag chair since last week,” she says. “It’s so nice to see that so many people want to contribute. And the campaign isn’t over yet, because with more money we can buy more materials.”

Hotel Stairs Training

The official presentation is being made in consultation with the hospital and the Friends of the Deklander Hospital Foundation. But the ultramarathon is on the agenda first. Kirsten and her husband will drive to the Swiss city of Zermatt tonight, where the marathon will take place on Saturday. “It’s getting very close now,” Kirsten says. “We’re already counting down the last few days, and it’s very busy. The idea I had in January has been implemented and it’s a success. I’m very happy about that.”

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It takes a whole year to prepare for this marathon, and in addition to training, you also have to take care of nutrition and rest. But Kirsten also had to train to get used to the altitude meters. That's why she climbed the stairs of the Van der Valk Hotel in Hoorn.

“I heard on a podcast that someone had done it in Rotterdam,” explains Kirsten. “I thought it would be a nice challenge. So I emailed them. They responded positively. In total, I climbed all the stairs 24 times, which is about 1,000 metres. It gave me a lot of energy and a great boost to do the marathon.”

Finish the ultramarathon

She doesn’t have time in her mind to complete the distance. “It could take me twelve hours,” she says with a laugh. “And I know I’m going to encounter so many beautiful things along the way in the mountainous landscape, with the Matterhorn in the background. And to have this incredible amount of money for the hospital department is the icing on the cake. But my goal is to finish the marathon.”