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: 2011-08-03 2011-08-12 Peru

2011-08-11:

20
Distance today: 45.0 km (Accumulated: 27356.0 km)
Elapsed time: 04:12:28
Country: Peru

Start 11:30am., 18c, overcast and med.wind, at km-stone "530" on hwy.1. Finish 16:48pm., 15c and same at km-stone "485" on hwy.1.

... Easy Rider

- As you probably have noticed there have been a lag in the updates of the website during the last few weeks. Mostly because of the far distance between the internet options here in the more remote parts of Peru, but also I have to admit, due to some struggeling with the motivation after the 'holiday' going on a brief visit to denmark for my fathers funeral. And, I have to admit, the somewhat bland and anonomous landscapes with an endless horizon of semi-desert each day -provides a bit of a challenge too ;-)

Luckily that motivation is now slowly coming back after a struggle which has been quite as hard as any part of the run from Northcape in Norway to here (!).

I think its safe to say that when embarking on a huge project its never a good idea to leave the route to go home - but sometimes its nessecary, as after Cape Town to treat various tropical diseases and malaia; and ofcourse for the funeral lately. But, its the mechanism of extreme runs like these that the focus needs very long time to be build in order to be able to handle the years of running (often it similarly takes years of daily work preparing the mental-motivational side), and this is largely lost when suddenly beeing home again. Its a bit difficult to explain, perhaps, but an example could be if you are running a marathon and at the halfwaypoint is brought to the finish-line, then spend an hour or so there - and then its back on the route again.. Very hard to find the focus again. Not least when the distance to the finish line is not counted in hours and km's, but in months and years.

Luckily I have some very good friends in running and ultrarunning, and the contact there via sms and emails often is a good source for ideas towards the motivation for the run. Not least its inspiring to know that Sarah Barnett from Australia (who ran the first 7000km from Northcape to the Mediterranian Sea together with me) is arriving in about a weeks time to join on the daily running for a month !

... But sometimes inspiration can also come from the oddest places: Yesterday I saw the old classic "Easy Rider"; one of the main 'road movies' of its time. And it reminede me strongly of some of the reasons why I do these runs: The spot-on portrait of the joy and intense freedom when beeing on-the-road, unmatched by little other in the modern life. The way the two main caracters takes in the landscape (in their case from their motorbikes), meets the local people and for good and sometimes bad, experiense the changes in culture and mentality as the kms pile up and the endless horizon reveals new adventures for each day...

This freedom and that curiosity towards the world is an important part of what the world runs are about; and I had nearly forgotten this in the struggle trying to get the daily distances in' !

During the next days I'll have internet as our small team have set base in Nasca (famous for its mysterious lines - more on that in the next reports) and thus the lacking updates will be uploaded !