World Run II / Reports

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.

Goto: 2010-03-14 2010-12-30 Africa

2010-03-15:

32
Distance today: 58.0 km (Accumulated: 21494.0 km)
Elapsed time: 05:32:09
Country: Africa

Start 09:35am at green rd.-sign "Monwabisi" on R310 to Cape Town. 23c, clear and l. wind. Finish 16:48pm at signboard at oceanfront "18' 28' 26" - 34' 21' 25" Cape of Good Hope". 25c, same and strong wind.

North to South run completed

In the late afternoon during a terriffic blowing wind under clear blue skies I reached the South-Western point of the African continent and added a small chapter to endourence running: the first person to run from the tip of Europe (Nordkapp, North of the Arctic Circle) to the tip of Africa, as well as the first runner to run straight across Africa.

As always here in South Africa I had fantastic support & good company from the extremerunners of S. Africa who made it a memorable day for sure !
With me - on sms via the pgs-phone - was Sarah from Australia who ran the first 7000km w. me and without whom I would never have started the run :-)

And behind the scenes sat Phil Essam, Darrel Raubenhaimer and my main sponsor Ecco who together w. Heimo Meriö helped with the vast amount of logistics of 21 400km of running !

Both as a runner and as a political scientist it is always interesting to make these record-journeys across the continents. As a political scientist you have a 'top-down' or theoretical approach - as a worldrunner you see the world from 'bottom up': the perspective of everyday life.

The high-politics world is most of the time a world of conflict; on ressources, economy, security, culture, religion. The everyday life as I see it each step straight across the continents (Europe, Russia/Asia, Australia & North America in world run 1 and Middle-East and Africa in world run 2) is a world of helpfullness no matter wich culture and religion.. Else I would not be able to do these runs !

My "heroes" are not the politicians or media stars, but the "everyday people" across the world. They see each other as much less of a danger and w. much more friendship and are in my oppinion, both as a political scientist and as a runner across our world, a far better source of solution of the severe problems we all face.

I dedicate this run and its records to those "everyday" people across the world !! They may never become famous or powerfull but in them I always see a far stronger will to change and to meet with peacefullness reguardless wich culture or religion they have - they are my heroes and makes things possible :-)

Nb: the gps-system wich transmits the run live (click on "live coverage" and select "set data range" in its top r. corner) unfortunately auto-shut down the last 5km today and wouldnt restart but I'll post pictures in the gallery and eventually some videoclips from those last km :-)
In a few days I'll post my overall impressions; especially of Africa wich changed my views dramatically of how we see the reasons behind many of its problems.