Machine-translated from Faroese and not yet reviewed. Read the original.
Just two weeks ago Bjørk Herup Olsen became the first Faroese woman to run under 10 minutes for 3,000 metres, improving her own old record from 2010 in the process. And now she has once again run a superb time, this time over 5,000 metres. It happened at a meet in Ohio, where Bjørk got all the way down to 17:12.75. That improves her own Faroese indoor record by one minute and 23 seconds! The time is also well inside the outdoor record, which she set when she won silver at the Island Games last summer. Then she ran 17:40.34, so this is a significant improvement.
Bjørk’s run on Saturday must be rated her strongest performance ever. At least, it is if you go by the IAAF points. Her time earns her no fewer than 940 points. That is 1 (!) more than she got on the day she received her student cap, when in the summer of 2010 she graduated and won the Faroese 10 km Championships in 36:18.
Running middle and long distances indoors is generally considered harder than running outdoors. So an indoor run like this earns more points than the same time would outdoors. The same points score outdoors corresponds to a time of 17:01 for 5,000 metres. Bjørk herself says it will be possible to improve the time a bit more. So it will be exciting to see whether we soon get the first Faroese athlete under 17 minutes.
Once Bjørk gets going, she usually sets several records in a short space of time. So it will be exciting to follow her in the coming period, and we wish her good luck in her upcoming competitions!
Hard work pays off. This photo was taken at Ólavsøka 2003, when Bjørk won the girls 11–13 race. Since then Bjørk has run almost every race she has had the chance to. Also on the podium are Jenny Svabo (left), who was also on the youth national team in 2004, and Maria Holm Lund, Ribe, who is the daughter of Borgarhjørt Holm. In the background you can see, among others, the Bragdið coach Jógvan Glerfoss, and a dapper Biggi, ready to go dancing at Ólavsøka. Oh yes. Many things happen.
