Egmond: the hardest half marathon in the Netherlands, and why the Dutch love it

The PWN Egmond Halve Marathon is on Sunday 10 January 2027, and it has already sold out — in record time, as it does most years.

This takes some explaining to anyone outside the Netherlands. It is a half marathon in January. It starts in a village on the North Sea coast, turns onto the open beach for about six kilometres, and then climbs into the dunes for the rest. There is no shelter on the beach. None. Whatever the North Sea is doing that morning, you run into it.

Why it is hard in a way a hilly race is not

A hill is a known quantity. You can look at the profile, do the maths and pace it.

Egmond gives you a headwind of unknown strength on soft, uneven sand, for half an hour, at the point in the race where you would normally be settling in. Runners come off the beach having spent far more than they planned, and then meet the dunes. The finishing times are slow and nobody minds, because Egmond is not a race you run for a time.

Why they love it anyway

Around 12,000 people do this voluntarily, in January, and then talk about it all year. It is the most Dutch race there is: no pretence that the conditions will be pleasant, and a kind of collective good humour about that. The village turns out. There is soup afterwards.

If you want one race to understand Dutch running culture, it is this one and not Amsterdam.

The bit that matters if you are entered

A sixteen-week block for Egmond starts on Sunday 20 September 2026 — twelve days from now. That block runs through the worst of the Dutch autumn and into the dark.

Which is the honest problem with winter racing here. The training is not defeated by the race, it is defeated by the eleven weeks before it: the evening that is too wet, the towpath that has iced over, the storm that arrives on your long-run Sunday. Miss enough of those and you turn up to a beach in January underprepared, which is the one condition Egmond punishes without mercy.

Protect the sessions. However you have to.