A friend last week had given me a tip that one Jesper Olsen, who was "running around the world," would be coming through Baltimore sometime this weekend:
After pacing back-to-back marathons (3:30 at the National Marathon, then 3:15 at the Shamrock Marathon the next day) last weekend, I was hardly feeling like running all week, and waited until Saturday night to e-mail him, not really expecting a response. Secretly, I hoped that he wouldn't respond, so that I wouldn't feel forced into another obligatory run.
But surprisingly, he replied around midnight, three hours after I had sent the email. He was planning on running through the city along Route 40, passing through the center around noon. Perfect (I suppose, still not feeling totally up for the task). My golden opportunity to find out, first-hand, what probably everybody wants to know - why on earth is he doing this?
Our email exchange was minimal, so I am really not sure what I'm looking for, but I know as soon as I see it that this has to be it. An average, unassuming man, in a neon-yellow windbreaker and black wind pants, bent over beside a white Prius parked in a driveway off to the side of the road, just east of Martin Luther King Boulevard. I get closer, and the "WORLD RUN II" sign on the side of the car confirms my instinct.
For a second, I think that maybe he's sick or tired or ready to hang it up for the day, and I have my "out." But he turns around, smiles at me and shakes my hand, and immediately sheds his pants - it's getting warm, he says, in perfect English through a thick Danish accent.
We loiter for a few minutes, so that he can change into a fresh pair of Asics (with bright blue laces that suggest that this spring's bright-color trend hadn't been lost on him), stretch his calves, and introduce me to his support driver, Morten. After a brief discussion of the plan for today - to run through the city, stop somewhere on the east side, and prepare for a longer segment tomorrow - we're off.
He immediately apologizes for the "slow" pace, to which I respond that there's no need to apologize. We naturally settle into a compromise of a little over 8 minutes per mile, splitting the difference between his typical running pace and mine. I reassure him that, although Route 40 had its problems, his two greatest urban-running challenges, difficult-to-follow signage and a lack of sidewalks, are not among them. And then the chatter begins.
Just one question about "how exactly does a run around the world work" sets off an excited litany of the places that he's been, as if this weren't the second time over that he was doing this. He started almost four years ago, in June 2008. Heading south from the Arctic Circle through Europe and Africa, then back north through South America into North America, he is now on, relatively speaking, the final stretch of his journey.
Each day, he runs with cell phone tucked away in a pouch in his hand, a phone which gamely continues to function in spite of its cracked touchscreen, a casualty of a fall during a mudslide in Colombia. The phone functions as communication device, camera, and, most importantly, GPS to track his route. He marks his point at the end of each day, and returns to that point at the beginning of the next day to continue his trek. Days on end of this have conditioned his body to be comfortable with up to 50 miles a day, although not every day is that long. Today is an "easy" day - only about 15 miles, enough to get through the congested city streets, and back onto the highway, a comfortable place for him to run tomorrow.
Our banter jumps from his curiosity about ultrarunning in America (he's amused by the fact that we insist on running ultras on trails, while in Europe, roads are the more accepted surface, and he's perplexed by the 100-mile distance, a product of our English measurement system that falls awkwardly between the 100-kilometer race and the 24-hour race) to bits and pieces about places along his most recent journey. Romania and Syria are a lot nicer than the media would want you to believe. Ethiopia and Kenya will never develop because they are far too reliant on aid from the United Nations - the people let fields lie fallow because "the UN will help us." Not a problem in some other African countries, where they are industrious by modern standards, yet still manage to hold on to their old traditions - traditions in some cases as wild as the king wearing a leopard skin and dancing about with his similarly inadequately-clothed attendants for two days before the harvest can begin. I get the feeling that he can go on for hours this way.
At times, I strain to hear over the traffic, and through his accent, but he chatters incessantly the whole way, skipping child-like over puddles and other low obstacles. It feels as though he's playing, although it turns out that not all of his skipping about has been harmless. In Kenya, he attempted to jump over spikes blocking a road, caught his toe, twisted, fell, and thought for sure that he had impaled himself. Turned out that he had merely punctured his right bicep on the rusty metal, far away from modern medical care. Two failed repairs later, the doctors warned him that if he didn't have it treated properly, he might lose his arm. Finally, in Cape Town, South Africa, he found treatment, at which point it turned out that he had malaria, and his immune system was dangerously depleted. Mostly undeterred, he pressed on through South America.
Against the backdrop of his near-death experience in Africa, our run through Baltimore's slums hardly seems dangerous anymore. In fact, Jesper delights in our unconventional route. He could have run through the Inner Harbor, or Fells Point, or Canton, or any number of typical tourist attractions. But he's more interested in seeing the "real" city, the way most people actually live, the things you'll never see on TV. When he talks about dodging rocks thrown at him by African tribesmen en route to Kenya (which he later learned was because wherever they set their tents, they considered their property to defend to the death, and therefore, he was inadvertently trespassing on dozens of people's property as he ran by), I can't help feeling that my late-night runs down Monument Street have suddenly become significantly safer in comparison.
Jesper, jogging out of Baltimore City on Route 40
We clear the residential section of the city, and run along the left side of Route 40, into the commercial and industrial zones. His chatter drifts from his harrowing escape from rock-throwing African natives to what life on the road is like. Taking a cue from my marveling at how, after all of the remote places that he's run, he's somehow here in Baltimore, on the roads I run every day, he shrugs this off, and says that the truly unique part of his experience is the passing through. Each day, new places, new faces - this, he says, is far different from the way we typically socialize. His experience is now far removed from life in Europe, where people are reluctant to move 50 miles from their hometowns to take a job, or even America, where people are tolerant of perhaps a few major moves in a lifetime. He briefly considers the thought of returning to "real" life, after so many years on the road. After the dozens of vivid pictures he's painted since the start of our run, he seems at a loss for words here.
But not for terribly long, because, as the road dips and climbs, so do we, and the running has gotten slightly more challenging, calling for a little more verbal distraction. He seemingly hasn't lost a bit of the bounce in his step, but our conversation returns to running, closer to the task at hand. We're somewhere in the middle of a discussion about training strategy when he, seemingly without warning, announces that it is time to stop for the day, at the obscure intersection of White and Pulaski. (I later discover that this is almost exactly 7 miles from our starting point on the other side of the city.) It's slightly further than he had planned for today, but he is now satisfied that he will no longer be dodging cars at intersections every 100 feet, and ready to call it a day and rest up for tomorrow.
His support vehicle driver, Morten, has pulled off to the side of the road, and he takes our picture next to the street sign before we go our separate ways. Jesper wishes me luck at the Umstead 100 next weekend, and says that perhaps he'll follow along online, so that if at some point I feel tired and ready to give up, I can think about "some crazy Danish guy" watching his progress. He tells me that I'll do well, since I appear to have plenty of "energy," based on the way I was pulling him up the hills on Route 40 (something that he would not want to have to contend with in a race, he says). I tell him that I do train on these, so I have a slight advantage, and wish him well before I head back the way I came, 7 miles back to my car.
Our stopping point for the day.
As I trek back, alone, the dozens of things that I could have asked him occur to me: what does he do in his free time, where's the best food, who are the friendliest people he's met, even my original question as to why he even started doing this in the first place? And I consider the wisdom he's imparted - the body adapts to the task, things aren't what they seem to be on TV, some parts of the world may seem strange, but people are people - and I feel as though none of this is surprising.
But as I run back down the same forsaken street that took us out to his arbitrary stopping point for today, and I picure him in his neon-yellow jacket and short black running shorts, bouncing along down the street next to me, apparently, to those who don't know any better, just another 40-something out for his Sunday afternoon fitness run, I don't feel disappointed. I consider the possibility that all of the above are just superficialities that only hint at the substance of his endeavor.
Because the look on his face as he bounds down cracked sidewalks in his bright-blue-laced Asics is not the typical 40-something fitness-jogger look of abject torture, or, at best, grudging acceptance. The look under his irrepressible shock of blonde hair is one of joy. His painful days of training and racing are behind him for now - each day, he wakes up and revels in the fact that each day, he can wake up, run to his heart's content, rest well, and run again the next day. It's something that's often lost amidst the hard-training, results-oriented running mantras that most runners follow. Jesper may be many things to many people, but my seven miles with him have made him a roving reminder to me of the joy that was why I started running in the first place. And considering my recent running malaise, I think I've found MY answer.
Good luck, Jesper, and godspeed.
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Week of 11 March 2012:
Sunday: 13 haphazard miles, spectating at the Shamrock 5K (90 minutes), including some 20-ish minutes of "cooling that b*tch down hard" with c-rad
Monday: 10 miles at lunch at APG (70 minutes), 13 miles to, from, and with the Fed Hill gang (90 minutes, including 15 fast minutes on the way back)
Tuesday: 1 mile easy (10 minutes)
Wednesday: 5 miles easy, at lunch at APG (35 minutes)
Thursday: 10 miles in circles near the New Carrollton Metro (70 minutes), 10 miles a few hours later at the Mount Vernon Metro station just because (70 minutes)
Friday: 10 miles at APG at lunch (70 minutes)
Saturday: 28 miles (225 minutes); pacing 3:30 at National Marathon, plus 2 miles warmup/warmdown
Total Time: 730 minutes
Total Distance: 100 miles
Week of 18 March 2012:
Sunday: 28 miles (210 minutes); pacing 3:15 at Shamrock Marathon, plus 2 miles of "warming that b*tch up hard" with c-rad
Monday: 10 miles (70 minutes) at APG at lunch
Tuesday: 3 miles easy (30 minutes)
Wednesday: 10 miles to, from, and with the Wednesday Night O'Donnell Square Run (70 minutes)
Thursday: 10 miles (70 minutes) at APG at lunch
Friday: 3 miles easy, trails (30 minutes)
Saturday: 16 miles on the HAT Run Course, including 6x(the last hill), running hard both up and down; ~3 minutes up, ~4 minutes down (120 minutes)
Total Time: 600 minutes
Total Distance: 80 miles
