Q+A: Lars Rebien Sorensen

What is your most favorite sport? Why do you like it?

I love riding my bicycle. I have always ridden my bicycle to work from home.

I started doing that because I could not afford a car. And then I lived in a place where I could ride my bicycle to work all year round, no matter what the conditions were.

Then I found myself working in Copenhagen. I was offered a company car but I still chose to ride my bicycle. It is good for me physically and mentally.

What is the most impressive thing about riding a bicycle?

There is a research organization called the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation. It collects money for research for type 1 diabetes. They do this in a way in the United States so that if people can collect $5,000, they will be invited on a free trip to Death Valley (in the Mojave Desert, east California). All they have to do is to pledge to donors who give the money they will ride 100 miles along the valley.

I got the idea of joining them as a company. So we joined in a way whereby I pay for 25 people a time at a cost of $25,000 and then get 25 tickets. We put the tickets in a lottery from which our people from all over the world can draw if they are interested.

Those who are lucky come to Death Valley where we meet on the same day. We meet a lot of patients there. Then we ride together, party in the evening and enjoy ourselves.

We do it every year in October. In that way, we live what we preach: a healthy life with exercise. We also contribute to research in diabetes and develop international influence.

Everyone sometimes feels frustrated or tired in work or life. How do you get relief?

I bicycle. To me, it's like meditation. So when you ride a bicycle like I do - and some of my friends do - we'll ride fast. We have to concentrate on what we are doing because otherwise we'll have an accident. It's very dangerous.

You concentrate in a different way. It's an opportunity not to think in the normal patterns. I have done this for many years. I just pay attention to where I am going, how fast I am traveling. It is as if everything else disappears. It's only breathing and movement. I find it refreshing.

Besides riding a bicycle, do you have any other hobbies?

I also like gardening. If we are moving home or one of my children is moving, I have to move all the stuff because it's important to connect mental work to the physical world. Also because what we do is sort of intellectual.

If I mow the lawn, I can see in a second what I have achieved. I can be satisfied by my work in one hour. In my job it takes 10 years, 20 years I cannot experience the entire reality that we are evolving because there are so many people and locations. Sometimes we need to have something physical in our lives. That's part of my meditation.