Jesper in New York

Jesper Olsen World run update by Jurgen Ankenbrand

October 6th, 2005

After leaving Paris on October 6th for NY, I contacted Jesper Olsen on the eve of my arrival in NY, to find out he also arrived in Manhattan on the same day. We arranged to meet the next morning where two local New York runners from Queens, a lady runner now living in Pennsylvania, who had crewed Jesper earlier on his trip and my self accompanied Jesper on his very last leg in the US.

The temperatures was in the seventies but the humidity was in the nineties as we met near the South Ferry in the lower part of Manhattan. Thed sky looked gloomy but we hoped that any rain would wait unbtiol we were done running and the weather goods obliged. Which we alAl appreciated. A camera man from the Guiness Book people with an offdice in NY was also on hand, although I am not sure who arranged this pleasant surprise.

Imagine five runners, including myself carrying my full-size Canon camera with me and the film guy running along the East side of Manhattan, presenting, even for New York, an unusual site.
As I knew the route to the UN building the other runners had to content with my “somewhat” slower tempo to lead the way.

One of the Queens runners carried a torch and on several occasions when the entire team stopped a few people stopped and asked questions giving me time to keep running or fast walking to get ahead. One time as they stopped I kept walking to stay ahead and when I made it almost to the UN building I waited almost 20 minutes for the others. As it turned out, they had stopped for a short snack of French fries and a drink for Jesper.

Winding our way through Manhattan and eventually up 1st Avenue we arrived at the UN (United Nations) building where there are always throngs of visitors. A Chinese man stopped to talk to Jesper and as it turned out, he had done some mayor biking through Asia and was duly impressed with Jesper’s accomplishment to date.

A few ceremonial pictures were taken and eventually the NY running-film crew whisked Jesper away to his hotel on Lexington Avenue. Sonia (sorry if I got the name incorrect) came along for the ride and eventually walked across town via Central Park to the upper Westside where she stayed at a friend’s apartment and I with my daughter who has been living in Manhattan since last year.

Jesper and I were to meet at his hotel the next day to talk about the time when I left him in California. Unfortunately rain was forecast for several days and by the time I had walked to Jesper’s hotel I was soaked. As a repeat visitor to Manhattan I should have know better than to leave home without an umbrella. As Jesper and I talked he told me that I have the distinction of being the only runner to have accompanied him on his very first and last day of his trek across the US, something I am very proud of indeed.

Later that afternoon Jesper and I met with his main sponsor from Germany, Oliver who will run with Jesper the very last stage into Greenwich Village in London where the around the world run will officially end in about three weeks. To this end, Oliver and Jesper ran in and around Central Park for an hour in the rain, while I was having a cup of coffee, trying to get dry while awaiting their return. Oliver, head of a large global company has a NY office and taken up residency right in Manhattan. It’s here that we met his wife, who cooked dinner for all of us while Jesper told us varies stories from his fast store of experiences along his round the world run.

Those who ever had the pleasure of meeting Jesper I am sure, will agree that he is an excellent runner and great person and it’s difficult not to be taken by his likeable and easy-going personality.

While I am trying to piece together an article of Jesper’s epic achievement (or at least after his anticipated arrival in London later in October) Jesper will be working on a potential book while he will try to ease back into a more mundane life in Denmark, which I am sure won’t be easy.

What do you do after you run around the world for almost two years? How will it affect Jesper is impossible to foresee, but it’s impossible not to leave a deep impression on his personality. After all, he will be the very first, and perhaps last runner, to have actually run around the world. This is such a mayor accomplishment, few can even begin to imagine what it took to complete. I guess we all will have to wait for his eventual book to appear, which will be written in a way also none-runners can identify with and perhaps get a small idea of what it takes to be successful at such an adventure.

In the meantime, adventures live on in the minds of thousands would be adventurers, most will keep dreaming, few will actually live their dreams, only a few special guys like Jesper.

Jurgen Ankenbrand, aka Ultra Kraut