New Year's Eve tradition for Danish club to hold marathon

Kota Kinabalu: It is a New Year's Eve tradition for the Inner Wheel Club of Kastrup, in combination with the Rotary Club of Kastrup in Denmark, to hold a social marathon each year.Visiting Bodil Joertensen, 73, from the Inner Wheel Club of Kastrup, said the distance for this marathon ranges from 10km to 40-odd kilometre (full marathon), depending on the stamina of participants. (Kastrup is where the International Copenhagen Airport is located).

"People can join as a team and there is one person taking care of the team. Everybody starts at the same time and when you go to the next post, you are not supposed to leave that post until the rest of the team is there…each participant pays a fee and the money collected is channelled to their local hospital," she told Daily Express.

Other charity projects are in support of cancer prevention efforts, poor children's needs and well-being of young people.

"Our club also takes part in a campaign which gives an impression of a 24-hour fight against cancer to spread the message of awareness, and it is held in different cities in Denmark. You make runs or walks…when somebody else goes, you come in.

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"There are teams called 'The Fighters' comprising people who are or had been on treatment.

They organise the event," Bodil explained.

According to her, charity work is carried out on a national basis as the club, which is organising the national meeting of the year, is given the privilege to decide on what the national body is going to support the following year. Bodil was in Sabah supposedly for the "birthday" of the late Tina Rimmer, Sabah's iconic artist, and for the installation of the Inner Wheel Club of Kota Kinabalu (IWCKK).

"Tina is an old friend of mine. She would have been 100 years old on Aug 1. Datin Rubina invited me to come…I met her during the International Inner Wheel Convention held in Sabah in 2009," she said.

Prior to that, she had lived in Lahad Datu for a couple of years and that was during the British colonial days.

Bodil found the IWCKK event very soothing, very homely in a very friendly atmosphere.

Making a comparison, she said the members in IWCKK are much younger compared with their counterparts in the Inner Wheel Club of Kastrup.

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"We had three ladies who retired, they were in their nineties. They said, 'We have done our time, now we want to sit back and relax.' I would say that the youngest in our club are in their fifties. We need a small group of the same age because then, it's sort of easier. No generation gap.

"Our oldest member right now is 87. She has been a member since she was 30 and that means, in her words, 'I am going to be carried away from here'," Bodil laughed. - Mary Chin

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