Thank you to everyone that participated in the Vancouver World Run on Sunday March 26. And also thanks very much to everyone that was able to come out to the lecture with Jesper Olsen on Friday March 24, 2006. These are events without equal as we were fortunate to have Jesper’s World Run Project recounted personally and for the
first time in English. I know that we have some amazing runners in Club Fat Ass but arguably none have accomplished anything close to what Jesper did over 662 days, 22 months, almost 2 years and 26,232 km.

The most amazing story I heard of Jesper’s entire World Run was his 6 day race at Colac, Australia. After running more than 14,000 km, the very next day he competed in an event with world-class runners. This race challenges participants to run around a 400m track for 6 days. The one that goes the farthest wins a large money prize and incredible admiration. Jesper had the energy and strength to strategize a cunning victory by completing 756.2 km in 6 days, 50km longer than the second place person. This allowed him to fund the balance of his trip across Australia and take a flight to North America. Of course, the day after the race, Jesper continued on his epic adventure and completed a pleasant 31 km run on his way to running across the Great Victoria Desert on his way to Perth. He wrote at the time in his diary, “As much as I appreciated the friendships and intense duels on the track - just as much I began to long for the open roads ahead of me.”

During the lecture by Jesper on Friday, we gave away a few prizes from our sponsors including 5 copies of Runner’s World with the story on Jesper. He was good enough to sign each of those copies for the lucky winners. We also gave away a Club Fat Ass t-shirt, a
nice gift bag of chocolate from Purdy’s and finally, because Jesper ran on Asics the whole way, we were lucky to have a pair to give away. Thanks to Keith Nicol at North Shore Athletics for getting Asics to provide a gift certificate for the runners.

By the way, in case you didn’t know, Jesper was largely fueled by chocolate on his World Run. This is why I asked Purdy’s to participate as a sponsor. They gave Jesper a load of their fine chocolate as well and were certainly intrigued by his story.

If you attended the lecture and perhaps even the Vancouver World Run, you may still not be aware that Jesper is training for a 48 hour event.in May. So while he was in Vancouver he was running at least twice each day for a good 10 to 15 km or more each time. And of course on Sunday at the Vancouver World Run he did the full 50 km with Karl, Glenn, Tim and Ludo. They had a great time and we all lucked out on a nice cool and dry day. There was a chilly breeze at the Centennial Theatre parking lot where we started but that quickly subsided to very nice running conditions.

Everyone doing the run was very brave of course … not because of the weather or the distances but because I was changing the course instructions up to the last minute. I did my best to keep the route simple but I think over half the runners did a custom course in the end. Only the 10 km runners did a perfect route I would say. There was Heidi and John from Seattle, Washington, and a first time CFA runner, Gary, from Vancouver. Baldwin came out for a short 10 km just to have the great experience of running with Jesper I’m sure.
Cheryl met up with Rhonda to have a strictly Stanley Park adventure after Cheryl got her picture taken with the group. And then Faith, Doug and I made our way to the Lions Gate Bridge behind the 50 km speedsters to see how close my calculations were to 25 km.

As I was running I thought about it some more and it became obvious to me that the middle distance run was closer to 22 or 23 km. Doug and Faith agreed and gladly took themselves off route for a loop of Lost Lagoon to add the extra distance … not to mention a lap or two around the track beside the Centennial Theatre at the very end just to be sure: apparently GPS can be great and also very demanding at the same time

As for the 50 km group, well, I think only Tim was terribly concerned about doing exactly the full distance. Thankfully, Jesper and the others embraced the essence of CFA events and did whatever came naturally. And you’ll notice in the results that Karl felt it was really only 40 km. I think he is confused because his speed has increased after training with Jesper all week!

Best of all, we were back safe and sound and in time for food and drinks at Mosquito Creek Bar and Grill. Thanks again to the owners Lucie and Kelly for providing a free beer to participants. And also thanks to Trail Runner magazine for 2 subscriptions, Kinesys for
some very cool foot sprays and sunscreen, and of course North Shore Athletics for some other handy running items.

I also gave Jesper a copy of the Ultimate Guide to Trail Running that he appreciated. Interestingly, Jesper prefers to run on “tarmac” as he says. But as most of us know, trail running is a great and fun thing to do. So, for one of Jesper’s last runs in
Vancouver, Karl and I took Jesper out on a nice gnarly trail run at night from Deep Cove to Karl’s home in the Hyannis area. Being a slow runner myself I thought just maybe I might have an advantage of experience over Jesper and would have a chance at staying with him on the run. I was only right for about 10% of the distance as he seemed a natural on the trails, even at night. However, to slow him down even more, Karl and I were sure to get just a little confused finding our way. But even that didn’t slow the very patient Jesper down much … it just gave him concern. And for that he promised to take us trail running on some real trails.in Denmark if and when we are there. (Karl will be visiting Jesper there this year so he better watch out.)

Thanks again to everyone that participated and shared these events with what I consider the world’s greatest runner … the first person to complete a fully documented 26,232 km run around the Earth!

Craig Moore

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