History

Long before the ASML Runners Club was founded, people from ASML already participated in the Marathon Eindhoven. In the early 90's, participation as a (small) group became more structural. Back then, the "old" parcours of the Marathon was still along the Eindhoven Airport "Welschap". But our organization was very fragmented, with different groups, and there was no ASML clothing. Until someone "via-via" arranged for an Asics runners shirt with ASML print. The concept was born, and for the coming years, shirts with ASML on it were printed, but often plain cotton shirts, not the fancy technical fabric we got now. And since the elite runners didn't always prefer the cotton shifts, they often just regeistered themselves for the marathon. Probably, there were quite some more runners back then than registered 'officially' via ASML.

Fun fact: the Marathon Eindhoven has been organized as many times as ASML exists in years. But since the Marathon was skipped a couple of times, it first started a few years before ASML was founded.

Registering together

In 2006, a small organization was born, that took care of the registration and clothing, and arrange for a more structured sponsoring from ASML. From that time on, the group of runners started to grow, year by year. But that also meant there was more attention to the design. It had to be the officially approved blue color, the right logo, and no year was allowed on the shirt. The design was often copied from the cycling community at ASML, since they were a lot larger than the runners. The supplier back then was Bioracer. As the ASML running gear got more professional, all colleagues that participated did so via the ASML organization, in an ASML shirt. About 80 by that time.

Many designs have passed in the years, together with the regular changes in the ASML corporate identity and logo, but all were blue. With the growing number of ASML runners, we became more visible on the street, and the slogan "Let's color the marathon in ASML blue" became more and more true.

The marathon itself also changed. Where the full marathon started as a double loop, in 2015 a new parcours was introduced with a single single loop all around the city. This was apparently a good choice, since then the number of runners also increased significantly. But apart from that, the organization had introduced a 10 km distance a couple of years earlier, which became a big hit. Initially, the ASML Marathon Organization was a bit hesitant to organize participation for the Quarter Marathon, but once we did, it appeared to be very popular with our colleagues. With that, the total number of ASML runners also increased. Currently, the 10 km is the biggest chuck of our ASML competitors, counting by number of feet.

One thing that has remained over the years is the Marathon Afterparty. Initialy it was a Pasta Lunch the day after, sponsored by Sodexho. Typically stories were shared, the results were printed out and hung on the wall, and some data fanatics compiled statistics about the results. This event is still organized by the runners club, but over the years the format changed. The pasta is replaced by drinks, the event is at the end of the day instead of by lunchtime, and the group has grown. Many of the past years, we got a visit from the Marathon organization itself to hand out one of the Business Run prized to our fast ASML teams.

Since 2018

In 2018, the Marathon Committee was officially transferred into an association ("vereniging"): the ASML Runners Club. With that, the scope broadened, and also other activities were organized. Well, that is not exactly true: participation in the Zevenheuvelenloop, the Veldhoven 10 miles, and the HTC run had been organized in the past as well. But the number of joined events increased significantly, and so did the number of ASML runners for the Marathon. The goal of the Runners Club to unite ASML runners is very evident when you look at the number of blue shirts at the start of the Marathon.

Shirts

Over the years, many different shirt desing were provided. From self-designed, to provided by Corporate Identity. They all have one thing in common: blue is the main color.

2012	2022	2024

Historic images

In the photos gallery on the ASML Runners Club page, you can find the archive, with many photos from the past. An overview of all the group pictures over the years gives a nice impression of the tremendous growth that our runners community has gone through.