The coolest Marathon on Earth on Greenland’s in a nice in the direction of VW’s secret test track. The consequences of not looking after yourself. Royal visit and a cruise in the Disko Bay. Reports of the extreme powers of nature, a bus that broke down and indescribable emotions on 11 September.

After trips to the heat of China and Kenya, the time had come for a deep chill with Adventure Marathon. The home of Santa Claus, Greenland, provided the ice, snow and dirt tracks for The Polar Circle Marathon 2001. Like previous destinations, Greenland was a wonderful experience. The run was very unusual and the cruise afterwards in the Disko Bay, with visits to tiny communities in the area, made marvellous once-in-a-lifetime experiences. Several surprising things occurred during that trip, leaving by no means only pleasant memories.

Three marathons in 24 hours round a lake. The tale of pouring rain in the dark of night with a runner about to fall apart and subsequently forced to take a pit stop in a tent.

A 24-hour relay race was arranged in Viborg for, among others, the people who ran in Kenya. With what I had achieved so far, I was conceited enough to sign up as a solo runner, covering the equivalent of the marathon distance in a day. It was another extreme experience; a run in which I got very close to my absolute physical limits.

42 kilometers straight ahead without one single hill, a brisk wind, the roar of the North Sea, changing surfaces but with sand all the way. What happens I wonder if you speed up your own run for a loving squeeze?

My first actual marathon in Denmark turned out to be an odd sort of race.
The North Sea Beach Marathon was run for the first time in 2000, so I ran in the second such run. The run is probably the only running event in the world run only on sand. In addition to the classic marathon distance of 42.195 kilometres, there is also a half-marathon and distances of ten and five kilometres. The year I’ve participated, the run began in Vejers and ended at Hvide Sande, as in the first year. Over the years the start and finish areas have alternated between the two places. Some years you run northwards and in others southwards. The half-marathon starts every year in Nymindegab and has the same finish as the marathon. The shorter runs now start and finish in the same place, so you run in one direction, then turn and run back. That was not the way it was in 2001, however. That year, the ten-kilometre race started at Skodbjerge Strand and the five-kilometre run at Hvide Sande South Beach.

In Africa with the world´s best middle distance runners, dried-out water stations, cheats with alternative running methods, problematic vaccinations, a young man’s debut as a half-marathon runner, exotic food, rhinos, thousands of flamingos, a bloodthirsty fish eagle, the world’s most drawn-out presidential election and a coffee farm.

The Great Wall Marathon became big sister when another marathon was named after Denmark’s famous writer, Baroness Karen Blixen, in 2000. The world’s fastest 800-metre runner, Wilson Kipketer started the race and welcomed the runners across the finishing line. It was a very special run, with a fantastic safari in the days that followed. The Karen Blixen Marathon was never run again, which is a crying shame.

We had to struggle through the race on the sunshine island of Bornholm in eastern Denmark on the wettest rainy day of 2000. All the way round the island, up and down hills and cliffs, a distance of 100 kilometers gave the marathon distance entirely new dimensions. Can a marathon runner catch up with a walk racer? What happens if you pour a glass of whiskey down the throat of an exhausted runner?

This run began as I was standing with my legs apart in a Chinese field three months earlier. When a man equally in need of a pee as I was told me that he would be running all the way round Bornholm – a distance of more than 100 kilometres – on the same day, my diagnosis of him was clear. The man was stark raving bonkers. As fate would have it, I was struck by the same insanity and signed up. It was during this race that I realised that it’s all in the mind – not in your legs.

The new millennium with a repeat of the fantastic run in China. This time with very few participants, but now with an international cut. Newly divorced, on my first journey with two children. The story of the runner who forgot his flight but got there anyway. The world’s toughest marathon, now even tougher in the extreme heat. The consequence of cooling yourself down with water. 17.4% have dropped out and one runner has collapsed. A love on the wall and the story of feeling pain, both in your body and in your heart.

A trip to the Middle Kingdom to run a marathon is not a bathing holiday with cold drinks at the pool. Apart from taking part in the world’s toughest marathon you have to resign yourself to being active from morning to evening to make the most of the many experiences that await you. These include the Forbidden City, Tienanmen Square, Mao’s mausoleum, market places, visits to factories and the imperial tombs of the Ming Dynasty. If your trip is a once-in-a-lifetime event there is every good reason fit all of the in.

How do you improve your personal marathon record by two hours and four minutes in just four months? You start your career with The Great Wall Marathon and follow-up with the Berlin Marathon. On the same occasion I experienced running with almost a hundred times as many athletes as I did on my debut.

Berlin Marathon 1999

My second marathon, my first big-city marathon, was Berlin 1999. I had of course been there the previous year as a spectator and now I wanted to run. My experience of the race in China meant that I had a great urge to find out what it would be like to run a “perfectly ordinary” marathon.

I will never forget what a fantastic experience it was running among so many others in front of such a large crowd. I have heard that one million spectators attend the Berlin Marathon. If one in eight spectators is also Danish then there would have been more than 100,000 of my countrymen on the sidelines. I was also running in red and white, the colours of the Danish flag, which was an obligation in itself. When, once in a while, I had to stop running and walk it was not long before I saw someone standing there waving our glorious flag or heard someone shouting. The support of the many Danish spectators was quite unique. It was like running at home. Many encouraging remarks were made by spectators of other nationalities, though.

I have actually experienced marathon onlookers the world over is very social people who show their appreciation towards everyone. I almost felt as though I were being carried forward. All along the route there were bands playing live music or music from giant loudspeaker stacks. There were also other kinds of entertainment. At one point Eddy Grant’s “Gimme Hope Joanna” was blasting out of large loudspeakers while further along there was a jazz band and then a reggae band playing on oil drums. It really was a terrific experience.

My desire to beat my own personal record by running at Berlin was fulfilled. With a time of 3:52:11 I was more than two hours faster than in China. Not many people manage to chop so much off their personal record. I have never beaten my time on that day and I dare say I never will.
It was also a big day because my son Steffen ran his first organised run. He ran a mini marathon of 4.2195 kilometres – in other words a tenth of the marathon.
The next day we drove home. I have now seriously developed a taste for the sport for which I had previously had no understanding whatsoever.
I had become a marathon runner.

A story begins

The fact that I was going to China was nothing unusual in itself. I have always been the perfect spectator, beer in hand. Running a marathon was simply unthinkable. A provocation 2½ months before the run turned my life upside down.
On 26 May 1999 at 10 a.m., 306 Danes stood ready at the start of the world premiere of the Great Wall Marathon, on the route which in several ways differed from the one that would attract thousands of athletes from all over the world in the years to come.

Hvad ingen af os på det tidspunkt vidste, var at en klassiker var født. Det efterfølgende år var deltagerantallet begrænset, men da først resten af verden fik øjnene op for den dansk-kinesiske perle fik løbet for alvor vokseværk.

From humble beginnings in the early 1980s, Albatros Travel grew over the next couple of decades to become Denmark’s leader in specialist travel to exotic destinations in every corner of the Earth, leaving ordinary package holidays to other providers.
One hot summer day in 1998, a group of the company’s staff met on Kultorvet, a square in central Copenhagen, to develop new and original ideas for future destinations. Suddenly, one of them burst out: ”How about a marathon on the Great Wall of China? ” We all agreed that the idea was crazy, but there was something rather exciting about it, and the ball was in play. The idea had been proposed by Thomas Thomsen, chairman of the Danish Athletics Association, and marathon runner and tabloid reporter Peter Fredberg. The seeds of a future classic had been sown.

The marathon sport can be traced back more than 2,500 years, when the soldier Phidippedes ran the classic distance and, according to myth, subsequently died. The discipline has been on the Olympic programme since the first games of the modern era in 1896. The marathon has grown tremendously in popularity over the last few decades and people have been extremely inventive. In this light it comes as little surprise that runners have started negotiating the Great Wall of China, Greenland’s inland ice, mountains and other spectucular places on Earth. Only the imagination sets the limits for what the future will bring.