Jesper Kenn Olsen – around the world twice

If you want to be inspired, I can definitely recommend reading about Jesper Kenn Olsen – the man who has run around the world twice and who has run a marathon in under 2 hours and 30 minutes. Jesper has an incredible view of the world and, in my opinion, a different and very natural relationship to the body, running training and building running programs. I have been extremely lucky to be allowed to ask him some questions. If you also have questions for Jesper, you can use the comments box below. Enjoy!

Om Jesper Kenn Olsen

For many, you are the closest thing to a superhero. Can you briefly tell us who you are?

Ha,ha; I hope no one thinks I’m a superhero ;-) I started out as a regular jogger just like everyone else. And those who have read the books about the two world runs or followed the races worldrun.org You will also have seen that there are some pages that are definitely not “heroic”!

But apart from that, I’m 43 years old. Raised in North Zealand. Have played pretty much every conceivable sport, except football, oddly enough, before I took up running when I was 12-13. I have a basic education in law and a master’s degree in political science, but I haven’t used either of them for what they are traditionally used for – but I’ll get into that a little bit at the end of the interview.

Who is Jesper when he’s not training for running? What fascinates you and what drives you in your everyday life?

Overall, it’s curiosity that drives me. Curiosity about almost everything! Everything from nuclear physics and French philosophy to computer games and long walks along the beach and in the surroundings of Vejle, where I’ve just moved in the constant search for new inspiring training terrain.

I love setting goals, preferably goals that are a little difficult to achieve. And then using curiosity, thoroughness and, well, stubbornness, to get from idea or dream to reality. My worst case scenario is when I have reached a difficult goal, and there is nothing new to tempt or motivate me! That is why I am currently searching with all my might for a goal that can even slightly match the absolutely fantastic challenges that I have had the pleasure of dealing with in my daily life for 4 years in world run 2.

Because a good performance is something that makes us activate all sides of our personality, and everything we can achieve as a human being. That is a great satisfaction, I think.

What I’m currently investigating is the possibility of an expedition across Antarctica (there is one, a Norwegian, who has done it before). But so far I haven’t been able to find anyone else who is up for a walk across Antarctica. Because I prefer to carry out my projects as a team, both for safety reasons and the pleasure of sharing a challenge with others. So the realistic thing might be to try a long competitive race.

My girlfriend from Australia, Sarah, is running a 5000 km race in New York for the second time this year (http://3100.srichinmoyraces.org/main-3100) .And there is something that fascinates me: namely that it is possible to motivate yourself to run 3100 miles on an 880 yard loop around 2 apartment blocks in New York. Running for about a month and a half up to 18 hours a day on the sidewalk around a local school and a few houses; that is almost as far as you can get from the daily experiences with all sorts of different cultures, nature and constant changes in daily life, which I had in the two world runs. So I am very curious about how it can be done.

Motivation

Do you do anything to motivate others to run more or exercise more?

From time to time I coach or mentor runners at home and abroad. In addition, I often give lectures at home, both about the two world runs, about cultural experiences and about training.

Last year I started The World Runners Club, where I, together with the other runner who has completed a race around the world, Tom Denniss, mentors others who have the same wild ambitions :- ) It is primarily with training development and mental preparation, logistics, sponsorship and media work.

Your personal running program

Do you have a running program you follow?

I haven’t followed a specific running program for the last 15 out of 30 years. But when I started out back as a young teenager I was very inspired by Arthur Lydiard’s training principles and made sure to learn his training programs and read his books. These are training principles that today probably seem very outdated. It is about a solid base of quantity training, typically 200-250km/week, before you embark on quality training. It may sound like a large ‘workload’, but over long distances it is rare that you get anywhere by cutting corners. It is thought-provoking that the top runners in Denmark, who in the 80s and 90s used the very training-intensive principle that is also found at Lydiard, performed on average about 10min. better than the elite runners in Denmark today. From a top twenty among men, who at that time ranged from 2.09 to 2.19, to today, where it is an extreme rarity if a single runner gets below 2.15.

These are fantastic achievements regardless, even by today’s elite runners, but one can’t help but think about how far one would have come if the quality and intensive training that has a higher focus today – was far above a training base like the one that is also experienced in many other places in the world.

What is a good running program for you? Would you like to share yours?

For me, a running program is first and foremost about your attitude towards training. Only then do the number of training kilometers, the different training types, recovery time, number of competitions in the season, etc. become interesting. So that’s what I think is more interesting to share a little bit about:

-First make sure you know what your goal is. And how much you “want” that goal. If you don’t care, you should probably look for another sport or define another goal.

When you have found a goal that really motivates you, it can be good to make an agreement with yourself that you will work towards that goal, even if it becomes very difficult at times, and that you are prepared to take the time it takes. Regardless of whether it will take weeks, months, years or decades. The big results come from the big effort and even greater patience.

That you make it clear what things motivate you. It can be very individual; terrain, nature, running in a club, running alone, that others know your goal or that you keep your goal a surprise, the personal victory, your development towards the goal, or it can be completely different things.

And then make sure that you never forget what your goals are and what motivates you. Because it’s easy, after many years in the sport, to quietly forget why you’re really passionate about your sport and why you get out and train! Something you can also easily forget when you first experience that running is not quite as easy a sport as many others.

In addition, of course, to learn from both theory/training literature and others in the sport. But in my opinion, it is at least as important to learn from your own body and its signals. Learn to become better at reading when an injury is coming and when you are right on the edge of your performance. And to be able to know when your body is ready to increase the training volume or intensity.

Because a training program will always be a static thing. It is made at one specific time, while your body changes and reacts to both your training and what is happening in the rest of your life every training day. Therefore, it is very worthwhile to quickly start learning how to ‘modify’ or adapt any training program you find or get from your trainer. You can always find some extra percentages by letting your body’s reactions become part of what determines exactly how a given training day and training session will shape up, without losing sight of the overall goal, of course.

When you have your background, your motivation and your mental approach clear, I think you can be successful with almost any training program. Because it’s not the program – but who you are as a runner and a person – that determines how far you go.

There’s no doubt that you run far. Very far. But do you also sometimes run quite short runs?

Yes. 2km!

For me, one of the important elements of a training plan is building a high frequency. That is, to achieve a large number of training sessions per week. Preferably 2-3 passes every day. The many short sessions in themselves train the body to recover faster from one session to the next, and many training sessions allow for greater flexibility and variation. Therefore, I use some very short sessions, usually 5km but down to 2km if I am very tired, to build a ‘framework’ of easy training sessions around the harder ones (e.g. a number of short sessions built around the long sessions from 30-80km, or the intensive sessions from 1km intervals down to e.g. 100-200 x 100m).

Once my body, but equally my mentality/habit, has gotten used to the fact that it’s OK to have to wear my training shoes many times a day – then I can slowly start replacing the super short runs with longer and longer runs.

It’s about giving your body and your mentality an optimal opportunity to slowly adapt to the training you want to achieve in order to reach your goal.

Which running session is your favorite? Do you have an example? And why is it the best?

I think that variation is absolutely central to training. Both to keep motivation, but also to avoid injuries. That’s why I don’t have a preferred session. It varies; it can be the long 2-3-4 or up to 7-hour training sessions in the winter, or speed games in the forest in the spring, long asphalt intervals in the summer, etc. It always varies!

You’re not only good at running long distances. You also run fast. 10 km in 31.29 minutes and Marathon in 2:27:57 hours. How did you get fast?

Because for me it’s a lot about motivation and building a training mentality that fits my goal. When I was running those times – and that was over ten years ago! – the focus was on finding a wide range of fast paces and test runs to work on speed until I was as fast as my body would allow me at those distances.

Then it was time to explore even longer competitions like 100km, 24h, 48h and 6day races :- )

You ran a marathon at a very young age. Have long runs always fascinated you?

YES. That is – expanding the limits of my capacity has always fascinated me. Because what are “long” runs in themselves? When I started as a runner, 3km was a long run and 10km seemed completely unattainable. Today, I would say 8 hours is a long run.

Choosing running shoes

Now it’s always dangerous to ask a sponsored runner about their choice of equipment ;-)

For the last 10 years or so I have been lucky to be sponsored, among other things, with running clothes and running shoes. In the first world run it was Asics in terms of both clothing and running shoes and in world run 2 it was Ecco that provided running shoes and financial sponsorship, and Craft and later Newline who provided the running gear. In the periods between races, e.g. national team races at ultra multi-day competitions, etc., it has been a mix of several different sponsors.

So I have to be honest and say that it varies a lot.

As most people probably already know, it is quite individual which shoe is the best, depending on which runner, distance and surface we are talking about. For me personally, Asics has so far been the brand that I run the best in. I have probably used that brand for about 24 years in total, when you count the years without sponsorship. That is my favorite by far GT series (GT-2000, 2010, etc. etc. over the years).It’s a shoe that, for me, has the perfect balance between cushioning, stability, fit and weight. In that order. Because without really solid cushioning, you’re in trouble when you run long distances, especially when “long distances” have the meaning it has for me.

Kayano is not a bad model either, but here the balance between cushioning and weight starts to become less good and the shoes also tend to be more stiff and thus provide a less natural running style. And the extreme is Kinsei, where even for a runner like me there is too much focus on shock absorption compared to the other things.

That’s often the case: the “top model” is rarely the best, regardless of which shoe brand we’re talking about, as it often has to show all the things the brand is good at at the same time. Then you’re more likely to find a specialized model further down the range.

But there are several ways to approach the problem of shock absorption, and this is where Ecco comes in: Because it also has a lot to do with your running style, i.e. how hard and how you land with each step. In Ecco’s Biom series they approach the problem in exactly that way. The goal here is that the shoe is built so that it allows the body to distribute the load with each running step as efficiently and naturally as possible.

It’s a shoe construction that feels much closer to “running without shoes” than Asics has ever done for me, and at the same time with plenty of comfort. So it’s an incredibly comfortable feeling to run with them. And that’s of course a very big advantage when your run is 37,000km like on world run 2…

Within Ecco’s Biom models, they vary depending on the pace you need to use them for: The faster you run, the more flexible the shoe and the smaller the difference between running ”barefoot” and running with the shoe.

But overall, Asics are still my favorite running shoe. Simply because the gel system still in my opinion is unsurpassed in terms of solving the dilemma of shock absorption versus flexibility.

In terms of clothing, Newline is clearly the brand that I have had the best experience with over the years. The only one that has held up to any terrain or wear and tear I have put it through. Maybe not quite as smart a design and as many details as many of the other brands, but again: when you are in the “longboarding world” it is nice to know that things just last and keep on doing so.

WORLD RUN – 2 times around the world

You can read all about your trips around the world in your books. JI have 1,000 questions for you, but let’s keep it simple. Wasn’t that ASS sick?

Only if you think it’s fatal to experience enough cultures, nature and challenges for a lifetime ;-)

It is of course about choosing to be curious about the world you live in, and with the total of approx. 63 000km for the two world runs, also a curiosity about what we as people and runners are capable of. If I look back and imagine that I had chosen the safe option; for example, using my academic education in a traditional way and not throwing myself into the ultimate challenges and experiences. Then I would probably have called that choice… a crazy choice ;- )

Not because I think a more ordinary life is less good, not at all! But when you have adventure in your body, it’s important to dare to do what you’re passionate about. Even if it seems unsafe or dangerous at first glance.

How many times did you consider throwing in the towel?

Before I reached Africa (and got malaria and other interesting tropical diseases): 0 times. Then maybe 500 times. There were months during the 1 year it took to run through the African continent, where every single day, in the evening after the stage was finished and, for example, the tent was set up on the savannah, I thought: “It’s too hard now. I simply can’t bear it anymore”. But before I stood at the starting line up in the North Cape, about 1½ years earlier, I had made up my mind that giving up was not an ‘option’. No matter what happened. Just like before the start of the first world run back in 2004.

This does not mean that I do not listen to my body or force myself through trials that my body cannot handle. It is important to understand. Because if you do not respect your body and the signals it constantly gives you during your training, there is no chance that you can get through a race like this, either completely or halfway. But there is a big difference between knowing that you are very tired, and perhaps thinking that you have reached your limit, and then giving up. Having reached your limit – that is not the same as not being able to find yourself far above that limit tomorrow or a week later without the same problems. The body is amazing in its ability to adapt. It is just having the patience, curiosity and experience to find out how to let your body and mentality have a chance to build up to an even higher level. We are equipped with an ability to adapt to any possible or impossible situation; as long as we have enough patience and self-understanding.

Was it a very lonely journey? What did you think about when you were most lonely?

Now there are a lot more people living in most other parts of the world than our 5 million, so it is very rare that you are lonely. Many of the cultures, even those we perceive as very “foreign”, are often more open and interested in someone who is not like them, compared to when I run in Europe for example. So loneliness.. No, it is definitely not something you experience a lot when you move through the world :- )

What was the biggest victory?

It was to finish in WR2. There were many good reasons why it couldn’t have been done. And it came very close to going wrong many times.

But you can read more about that in the Danish book about the race, Kunsten at Ville (which can be purchased at http://www.haase.dk/titel.php?&isbn=9788755912687), or the English e-book about the two races, which has just been published: The Runners Guide to the Planet (link to iTunes – alternatively send me an email and get 50%), and which also contains some training plans in addition to the story of the two races.

You are now at the end of the road. Maybe other runners can inspire you too? Read the latest interviews on this page..

You can read more about Jesper Kenn Olsen on Wikipedia oron his personal page, WW. You can also see +10,000 photos from his expeditions here. I can also highly recommend his books, which I have referenced a few times throughout the interview. Use the comments section if you have any questions for Jesper.

Jesper, thank you so much for wanting to participate. I really appreciate it. It’s extremely inspiring to read about you.

Furthermore, all information; daily reports, pictures and GPS tracks from the race are still available on worldrun.org