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: 2011-04-24 2011-04-26 Chile West

2011-04-25:

17
Distance today: 30.0 km (Accumulated: 24866.0 km)
Elapsed time: 02:51:53
Country: Chile West

&Start 11:00am, 18c, cloudy & l. wind, at green exitsign "D71, Combarlala Canela Baja" on hwy.5. Finish 14:57pm., 21c, clear & same, at blue km-marker "km 310" on hwy.5.

North !

Its a joy again beeing back in this "ultimate liberty", each day w. a new horizon, a new piece of road and a string of small running challenges (like the steep costal hills today ;-), new nature/animals, culture and people to experience :-) How I Missed it those 6 days beeing 'locked in' waiting for the logistics to fall into place so I could escape elseway nice Santiago !

- Suddenly the air is once again clear; Santiago sitting in a bowl between mountains and thus w. some of the sharpest smog I've experiensed even stinging eyes & throat when going for a jogg. It does take its time to settle back into the rythm so like yesterdays 28km todays run was a very modest distance of 30km; and with quite sore legs by the way ... Yes, with more than 50 000km of world running (26000km in wr1 & 24500km in first half of wr2) the legs take changes a bit slower than when I was a young longdistance runner a few decades ago :-) But I Much prefer the hardship and daily surprising, even sometimes frustrating or infuriating-, challenges than running in circles' like those few days in Santiago.
When you have experiensed & got used to that intense freedom of the world runs - it becomes nearly a jail beeing confined to the same track, street or few blocks of the city. Not that I have not enjoyed and do respect the "circuit races"; I've have had much joy doing them and especially the international 6day races, but the freedom and Urge for the ultimate open roads has over the years grown stronger and stronger :-)

As I was running up a steep hill along the breaking waves of the Pacific it struck me: from here its straight forward to the finish ! North ! There mignt be a long way and there is ceartainly no guarantees that I can make it, it still requires a lot of luck along w. a bit of stubborness or grinding of teeth when it is hardest - but New Foundland Is North and at the North-Eastern end of that chain of roads, days and km which about 17 000km further ahead ends.

And North is not only a direction on the compass or the way to my destination. Its where I come from ! Literally, since wr2 started at Nordkapp at the northernmost point in Europe, but, also since I for each new continent I run across feel my connection to Scandinavia grow stronger. For each new culture I learn to appreciate and each stunning new setting of amazing inspiring nature, I feel my roots to 'the North' grow stronger.

To me "the North" is Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland. Very present also in this second world run: Norway is where my main inspiration come from - Roald Amundsen and Fridjof Nansen, the classical explorers, and the modern such as for example Thor Heyrdahl; all of which displaying the way one can succesfully learn from and to some extend 'grow a part of' the enviroments & cultures one wants to successfully navigate through. Instead of trying to 'fight them' or overcome by technical equiptment which anyways will break down in the harshest enviroments once the journeys drag a bit out in time. Sweden - is where I live when I am home; Malmoe is to me 'the middle of Scandinavia' with a mix of all the best ingredients of "North"; the discipline of the swedish people, a bit of the relaxed life of denmark, a taste of the open nature of Norway - and the obsession with sport of Finland :-) Denmark is obviously where I come from, was born and where I still find my favorite trainingterrain at the lakes & quiet forrests North of Copenhagen - learning running the "recreational relaxed way" at my first running club, Hjerteforeningens Motionsklub, with values that has since been central for me even during 27y. of competitive running: to always listen to & respect the body, to be creative with training and choice of terrain and routes, and to never adopt the 'elite way' of "training is 90pct. hard work and 10pct. joy" but the opposite: that each session can be a Joy and something to look forward to :-)
Finland, is the place where I have experiensed most support and understanding of what the world runs are. To an extend where I dont even myself understand why the support is so unconditional (it is just a guy running ! And by now a very tired guy ;-) But when getting to know Suomi and the finnish mentality then its perhaps not so strange afterall: one of the defining words of their culture is "SISU" - "Endurence"; and they seem to have a condenced version of all the Scandinavian fighting mentality, taking challenges and sporting 'impossibilities' as nearly a Must ! :-) Kiitos Suomi :-)

Ps: Ofcourse denmark does also have its explorers; not on level of that of Norway in my oppinion, but even so there are outstanding examples. Knud Rasmussen (Greenland) and not least the perhaps less known Vitus Bering whom I first proper read about after the first world run - yet that made me the more appreciate the enormous scale of his journey and effort - As part of wr1 I had run straight across Russia & Siberia; 10 500km, but, a few centuries earlier Bering travelled the same streatch across Russia & Siberia and Then began his real journey, to sail out towards N. America and discover what then became the Bering strait. A quite tough journey, crossing Siberia carrying 2 ships & keeping together a 100person crew. Tough enough to unfortunately cost 50pct. of the men their lives (including Bering himself who died on the return journey to Sct. Petersburg where the tzar had commisioned him to do the exploration). Another demanding expedition was the "Carsten Niebuhr" expedition into the by then not so known Arabian world w. the aim of gaining scientific knowledge of their culture, botanics/fauna and geography. It ended up beeing marred by malaria sickness - which they mistook for "some enfluenza or cold" and the interesting and detailed account of the expedition by Torkil Hansen in "Det Lykkelige Arabien" (unfortunately only avaliable in danish/scandinavian) painstaikingly describes how in turn each of their 3 academic members is laid across the camels of transportation, sticking out the "cold" untill they eventually die. Having experiensed a taste of tropical diseases myself when running through Africa in the first half of wr2 (two operations in the r. arm to avoid spreading deep infections, a light case of malaria, 3 guardia infections, amoebic dysenteria and numerous cases of diarea - a lot of fun altogether.. ;-) then its a shaking account to read and recognise how ones aim eventually gets blurred and at the end nearly impossible to keep clear as the diseases take over. (One member of that expedition survived to return home; Carsten Niebuhr).

But as mentioned, to me the Norwegian explorers stand out. And perhaps none more than the ones who during the viking ages more than 1000years ago crossed the Atlantic via Island & Greenland to discover the North American continent, at New Foundland which is the ultimate goal of the world run 2 if I can make it running that far.