THREE FORKS - Bjorn Suneson turned his commute to work into a training regimen.
He runs to work. He runs home for lunch. Ditto for the afternoon, and for dinner.
The distance from one to the other?
"Too short," Suneson said in the Wednesday-morning sun while running on Frontage Road near Headwaters State Park.
The 62-year-old Swede is in the midst of his second run across the country in four years. His first one did not include Montana, but after 25 consecutive days of running, Suneson jogged into the Gallatin Valley on Tuesday afternoon, and on Wednesday evening, was resting comfortably in Bozeman - ahead of the latest "winter" storm.
"I read a lot about Montana and I love your mountains," he said, with a rare clear view of the Bridgers in front of him. "I had to see it."
Suneson is one quarter through a 3,000-mile, 11-state journey that began on April 9 in Westport, Wash., and will continue, he hopes, until he reaches the Atlantic Ocean in Tybee Island, Ga, in mid-July. He takes no days off - his prior cross-country run was completed in 95 consecutive days - has no sponsor and is not raising money for a charity.
He pushes a three-wheeled stroller packed with clothes, food, water, two Global Positioning Systems, a computer and a tent, although he's used that last item just twice on his current trip. Luxury, to him, is staying at Super 8 motels.
Suneson, an economic journalist in Stockholm, expects to change running shoes five times before he sees the ocean again and averages more than a marathon (26.2 miles) per day. On Sunday, he ran nearly 42 miles. His shortest daily run thus far came the next day: a paltry 23.5 miles.
All this leads to an obvious question: why?
"Feeling free," was his simple reply. "This is wonderful, isn't it?"
He said his favorite stretch of road was Tuesday's gallop on Highway 2 along the Jefferson River near Lewis and Clark Caverns - nothing but mountains, water and railroad tracks.
"Fantastic," gushed Suneson, who named his experience "Tailwind in Paradise" on his blog (www.suneson.se/index.php).
But his trip hasn't been completely about beauty.
On April 22 near Lewiston, Idaho, his GPS mistakenly led him onto a steep road into the mountains. A "Road Closed" sign greeted him, but Suneson kept going anyway. There were no houses nearby, no cars; nobody to ask for help. The road soon turned into dirt, then mud.
"It became impossible to push my stroller," he said. "I kept telling myself, ‘Bjorn, take it easy, take it easy.'"
He ended up turning around and had to backtrack 18 miles to get back on course - undeterred, of course.
"That doesn't matter at all," he said of the time most people would have considered a waste. "I've been very lucky because I've had no big problems and so far I'm not injured."
While he is alone most of the time in the States, Suneson is married and the couple has five children.
"She's supports me 100 percent," he says of his wife, to whom he speaks to daily. "And if she didn't do that, I wouldn't be here."
The backing is strong in America as well.
"Your country is one of the best to come to for running for many reasons," Bjorn said. "One of the main reasons is the people here. They're so encouraging. If I do something similar at home, they think I'm an idiot."
Suneson took up running at age 36. In addition to his coast-to-coast runs, he has run from Chicago to New Orleans and from Denver to Oklahoma City. On his last run across the country, he started in Oregon and finished in Virginia Beach, Va.
He's run plenty of marathons, but not surprisingly, says that distance is too short.
And, he said, the benefits of running don't end when the shoes come off.
"It has given me self-confidence. I'm astonished every day that a 62-year-old man can run so much as I do. What the coast-to-coast run has taught me is that there's a solution for every problem. You have some problems, yes, but when the day is over, you have solved that problem. Those are experiences you have in your normal life.
"The difficulty is in your mind," Suneson says. "I have a very strong mind; I never give up."
Tim Dumas can be reached at tdumas@dailychronicle.com and 582-2651.
sagarmatha posted at 1:50 am on Thu, May 6, 2010.
Nice story. I follow him on his blog every day.
Staffan Malmberg
Preparing for my 38th marathon in Stockholm