Thomas Hugo Møller, CEO of the North Jutland airline Great Dane Airlines, is currently in quarantine at a hotel in Hanoi, Vietnam but even though he is confined to a hotel room for another five days, he has still managed to run a marathon.
Danish media NordJyske, has spoken to the Danish pilot who after the end of quarantine will be flying domestic flights in Vietnam for six weeks before returning to Denmark again. The Danish airline, Great Dane Airlines has two planes and 45 employees in Vietnam at the moment and Thomas Hugo Møller says to NordJyske that colleagues who have been in Vietnam in the past have done a lot of things to keep going during quarantine.
“One of them ran a half-marathon in the room, and I had to challenge that,” he says with a smile on his face.
But how exactly do you run a marathon inside a hotel room?
“You can do this by running all the way to the door, turning around, running all the way to the corner of the balcony, back again, and then repeating it about 4000 times,” Thomas explains. “The first couple of evenings I just tested it out with a couple of races of 8-10 kilometers. I usually run marathons at home in Denmark – I have run 60 – but never in a hotel room until now, Thomas says.
Despite the previous experience, he was somewhat pressured after about 35 kilometers because he had to pass the doorstep out to the terrace. “Everyone who has run a marathon knows that even the slightest increase when you have run that far can hurt.”
Thomas’s father who works as a flight attendant at Great Dane Airlines is also in quarantine right now, in the room right next door in fact and every morning the pair walk 10.000 steps respectively. Thomas explains that it takes almost two hours but says, “You kind of have to keep a rhythm going, and from home I had planned my days because otherwise, you can go completely crazy from this. The door is only opened five times a day and it is either the doctor who comes and takes the temperature, or it is food being brought, so it is a matter of inventing things to do to make the time go by.”
When the 14-day quarantine is over, work begins in Hanoi, and the first domestic flight for Thomas departs for the island of Condao, a small island in the southern part of Vietnam.
“After quarantine, we will move to a normal hotel in Hanoi where we have the opportunity to go out after work. Here in Vietnam, the only restrictions are mandatory facemasks. All shops, restaurants, and cafes are open, and you can gather whoever you want, as long as you are wearing a facemask, Thomas says.
