Jesper Olsen flounder in Eastern US, anectdotal evidence for PM2.5 effects.

Jesper Olsen , the Dane who ran around the world, in discussing the run, said all went great until he dropped down into Minnesota, at which point he had a hard time...hit the wall....all the way to New York and then, miraculously he regained his strength once he arrived back in England.


Here is his route. Consider/compare his route to this air pollution map below:
His route stayed North of the bad areas in Europe, and once in the US from Minnesota on he complained and was forced to run through the "red and yellow zones" for one of the only or very few times of the trip. He complained of his daily mileage dropping from about 50km's that he had maintained for the first 1.5 years down to 30km's/day I believe.









click on image to enlarge
Here are excerpts from his statement and other comments about this:
Note: I have the article saved somewhere and will find it soon....for now all I can find is this:
"We all had heard about the difficult time Jesper had running north through the US"
Websites: World Run. WorldRun.org home
I will email him perhaps for a statement on this and ask whether or not he thinks haze may have played a role.