What to do without the Vierdaagse? Of course, the Nierdaagse!

18 July 2020

The initiative was part of the national “Nierdaagse” (Kidney Marches) organised by the Dutch Kidney Foundation. The aim of the Dutch Kidney Foundation is to cure kidney diseases. The Nierdaagse helps to reach this goal step by step. Many kidney patients live in uncertainty and for them it is increasingly difficult to work, to sport, to live. The Kidney Foundation therefore invited the general public to walk along with the Nierdaagse and help cure kidney diseases. 

It was quite a contrast. Instead of being among the 1.6 million people that were expected to come to Nijmegen in the weekend of 19-20 July, we were walking on small trails running through desolated forests in the vicinity of Nijmegen. On Saturday, after having crossed the Mookerheide, we had a home-made lunch at the serene top of the St Jansberg, and on Sunday we walked through the Ooij, 45km in total. The variaty of subjects you can talk about (or how often you can say ‘mèp’) when walking together for over 10 hours, is amazing! Even though there seemed to be an inverse relationship between tiredness/blisters and the amount of conversation.

I think we also checked all the boxes for a Physiology-responsible event: we moved a lot and sat little, ate low-salt snacks (i.e. butter cake), inhaled a lot of corona-free fresh air, pushed our personal boundaries to go next level, and collected lots of money for kidney-research. But most importantly: we had a lot of fun together.
Many thanks to our Physiology-walkers and -sponsors for making us the nicest and most-fund-raising team!
 
Our walk also obtained some attention on social media:
https://www.facebook.com/Radboudumc
https://www.facebook.com/nierstichting/
And we appear in the podcast of the Nierdaagse on July 31^st (you can listen to the interview via YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fIoq-a6bfvo&feature=emb_title (in Dutch))

Here are some more pictures: