Soft power

Friday and apparently it was my turn to wake up with a cold. At least the boys seem to have fully recovered so that they can return to school on Monday after a week of quarantine. Reading Monocle’s annual soft power ranking, I am again reminded of how widespread the view is that Sweden has taken a “no economy-slowing” approach to Covid-19, even among people who are normally in the know.

Unable to go running myself, I am watching Kilian Jornet’s attempt to set a new world record for 24 hours on the track. To beat the current record of 303 km set by ultra-running legend Yiannis Kouros back in 1997, Kilian will have to run faster than 4:44 min/km on average for 24 hours straight (a pace that I may be able to sustain for a couple of hours at maximum).