World Run II / Reports
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The map shows the position of which the pictures for the day are taken (if any).
The start and finish markers are placed at the first and last valid registered position.
This is not nessesary the actual start and finish position, if GSM or GPS signals was not available.
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2009-04-17
2009-04-19
Africa
Distance today: 25.0 km (Accumulated: 12590.8 km)
Elapsed time: 02:32:34
Country: Africa
Start at "B.B.B." bed & breakfast in Bole, Addis Abeba, 15:30pm. 24c, white clouds and l. wind.
Finish 18:11pm. At "B.B.B." bed & breakfast in Bole, Addis Abeba. 19c, sunset and same.
Desert Love
When you have had days and weeks like I have had in Northern Ethiopia w. stonethrowing, shortage of food, illness, bad roads in steep mountains, worn down equiptment; worn down body - then it slowly becomes like a desert where you run dry of motivation and reason to do the run, with 12 000km weighing the legs down and 28 000 left to run.
My girlfriend who I met in Khartoum during the unrest at the ICC verdict of the Sudanese president, when coming in from a real desert (the Sahara desert !) had flown to Addis Abeba to meet me.
While my supply-driver Tommy "the gun" was repairing my 1988' world run Mitsubishi Pajero w. safarari setup, she took care of a dried out finished world runner:
She treated me to a stay at a 5 start hotel, the Sheraton in Addis Abeba.
I have stayed at my share of luxury hotels around the world ...but Never experiensed outrageous LUXURY like this !
- Imagine to wake up to a breakfast table where even the pastry section is larger than at most good danish bakeries (and I have a sweet tooth.. ;-). 1 1/2 hour just to sample some of the choices together !!!
Imagine to wake up in an airconditioned room when you have been sweating through the nights in 2usd. cementrooms and tent after 30 - 45c days of running through N. Africa for 14 weeks !
Imagine marble on the floor and news on a cinema-size plasmascreen tv when you have been driven to itchy crazyness on sticky carpets, stung by a mosquitos while reading a line of news on the phone !
To sit and enjoy a quiet talk while the piano is playing gently in the background after a swim together in the 32.1c pool - when you have had screems in your ears for weeks in ethiopia, sandstorms 'polishing' them in the Nubian Desert and rarely enough water to wash !
Imagine to go to sleep and wake up to a Kiss from the sweetest girl on 4 continents :-) When you have been burned by the sun and hit by stones from the ethiopian kids as a daily chore !!
Its an unexplainable contrast. It makes it all worth and gives a strange meaning to the suffering of running through East Africa by accentuating the intense joy in those 3 days !!!
I have never had better days in my life !
Today we took a late check-out, went to Tommy Bed & Breakfast and said goodbye to eachother by running 25km in the hills together. She is training for her first marathon and has the will of an ultrarunner :-)
... Now I'm fuel'ed up in every way and ready to battle in the highlands again !!
NB: In Ethiopia gprs-service (global phone roaming service) is not yet avaliable for datatransmission. Therefore the Live-gps data cant be transmittet to the website as usual. It may first be avaliable in Kenya. Untill then traditional documentation is used: photo, logbook, video, wittness etc. !