World Run II
Olsen and Sarah Barnett ran the North-South route starting on 1 July 2008. The North-South run aimed to complete a distance of 40,000 kilometres (25,000 mi), thus making it the world's longest fully GPS-documented run. The run went from top to bottom of the globe and back, running across four continents, multiple cultures, natural environments, and a huge range of temperatures and terrain. It started at North Cape, Norway (1 July 2008) passing Helsinki, Finland (4 August), Copenhagen, Denmark (25 August), Budapest, Hungary (25 September), and Istanbul, Turkey (5 November). On December 1, 2008, near Silifke, Turkey, Barnett had to give up after 7,334 kilometres (4,557 mi), and Olsen continued alone. He passed Cairo, Egypt (1 January 2009) and Addis Abeba, Ethiopia (16 April). Cape Town in South Africa was reached by 15 March 2010, thereby completing the first half of the run and the first documented run through Africa, a distance of 21,449 kilometres (13,328 mi).
Olsen spent more than six months recovering in Denmark due to dysenteria, malaria, and two operations due to eliminate deep infections in his right arm. He then continued his run on 1 January 2011 from Punta Arenas for the last half of the run, through South America and North America to Newfoundland . On 28 July 2012, Olsen announced on his website the completion of World Run 2 in Cape Spear, Newfoundland. Olsen was tracking World Run II with a GPS tracking unit via Endomondo Sports Tracker. Live coverage of the run was available from the Endomondo section of the World Run II website.
Read more about this topic: Jesper Olsen (runner)
Famous quotes containing the words world and/or run:
“In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands, and if we go beyond our usual course we still carry in our minds the bearing of some neighboring cape; and not till we are completely lost, or turned round,—for a man needs only to be turned round once with his eyes shut in this world to be lost,—do we appreciate the vastness and strangeness of nature.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Lancaster bore him such a little town,
Such a great man. It doesn’t see him often
Of late years, though he keeps the old homestead
And sends the children down there with their mother
To run wild in the summer a little wild.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)