Wed 3 Sep 2003

Why me?

It seems that no sooner am I back on my feet, some new disaster strikes. Last weekend's running plans were scuppered by the combination of a sore throat and a sudden, unexpected attack of drunkenness; then yesterday, when I was just 1.384 miles (SDMs are wonderful things) into my planned long run, I tripped over on an uneven canal towpath, and gouged lumps of flesh from my right knee and both palms.

Horribly embarrassing, and very painful. Sometimes, do you wish you were a kid again, and could just wail away your traumas...? You do? Blimey, how pathetic you are. I try to take a more manly approach.

After struggling to my feet, hoping that no one had seen me, I walked on for a while, then eventually began running again. It really did hurt, but I managed to do 7.5 miles, another slight advance on the recent increase in mileage.

When I got home I performed open-knee surgery with a safety pin and some tweezers, and after much poking and scraping, managed to remove a sizeable lump of sharp grit from my ripped flesh. It was about... oh, 6 inches in length, and must have weighed about 3 kilos at least. I must hang onto it or no one will believe me. Let's just say it would make a damn good door-stop.

Today the knee is sore and bloody, and wasn't improved by having to travel into London, along with the rest of my limbs, where it helped to tie up a few loose ends before we all head for Israel tomorrow. I'll have to monitor its progress, but the firm plan is to get some good running in while I'm away. I have to. With only two and a half weeks to go till the Great North Run, I'm desperately short of fitness. If I can run most days and fit in a couple of ten milers I'll be happy.

Beginning to look forward to the trip. Should be interesting. (And hot. About 95F at the moment.) Work will take up most of my time, but I'm determined to have a couple of adventures as well as do some running. I'll be keeping the running commentary going while I'm there, so do come along for the ride.

People keep asking me if I'm nervous about going there, and the answer is no. Travel, and seeing new places, are among life's great pleasures for me, and the statistics will always provide reassurance. I suspect that London in the 1970s, when the IRA were bombing pubs and shops, was no worse than Tel Aviv is right now. It was just a little unfortunate that the day I heard I was going, was the day of the Jerusalem bus bomb that killed 20 people, quickly followed by the Israelis bumping off some Hamas leaders, and the Hamas announcement that "revenge will sweep far and wide into every corner of the Jewish state". Added to this was the advice to travellers I read on an Australian government website that suggested that travel to Israel was completely safe as long as you avoided hotels, restaurants, shopping areas, public buildings and all forms of public transport.

But if I do get bumped off, let's hope that I manage to see the England match on Saturday before I flutter off to Hell.

I can just see myself queuing up in front of those scorched gates thinking "Crikey, and I thought a grazed knee was bad news..."

Fri 5 Sep 2003 Tel Aviv

Pointless Activity No. 317: Neatly folding clothes into a suitcase before flying with El Al.

It took the Heathrow security team less than twenty seconds to transform a morning's work into something resembling a clothing bin at a jumble-sale. Alongside this act of vandalism was a Stasi-like forty-minute interrogation by a couple of earnest officials. Somehow, I got the feeling that my answers were not really the ones they wanted to hear.

I even had to fire up my laptop and show them my recent emails. So if nothing else, at least they'll be able to hold their own in conversations about life in the Second Division. They then phoned Israel to talk to a variety of people to try to locate the hole in my story. In the end the three of us stood there in silence for a while, just staring at each other. They then glanced at each other, before the woman beamed at me and said "Enjoy your time in Israel. We advise you to stay away from the West Bank."

"Oh, don't worry about that", I chortled. "I'm HSBC all the way..."

First hurdle cleared. Next stage was to test my clothes, luggage, phone, computer and hands for traces of explosives using a kind of wand. The results were fed into a Star Trek-like machine, complete with flashing red lights and beeps. Eventually got through that one as well, which meant that, after 1 hour 10 minutes I was deemed suitable to check in my bags. They wouldn't let me keep any hand luggage. That was to be collected just before boarding.

Then it was through the normal security scan and eventually, at the departure gate itself, a final thorough body search.

I was in.

My good intentions for this trip lasted about 10 minutes into the flight when the two guys next to me ordered two Bloody Marys and four quarter bottles of wine between them. That's all it takes to destroy my resolve -- the sight of someone else intent on having a good time. But at least it made for a jolly trip, and by the end of it I'd consumed a great deal of Galilean wine as well as the life story of the guy next to me. By far his greatest achievement was to have been born the cousin of Ray Wilkins, former player and manager at QPR.

He's a tour operator, specialising in organising trips to sites of religious significance. "Pilgrimages are my bag", as he put it. During one of those conversations one has after a few glasses of wine, I agreed to provide a critique of his website in return for a free holiday. I severely doubt that anything will come of this, but I might give it a go, and will report any progress.

The other memorable moment from the flight was the choice of food available. The question from the beaming steward was: "Chicken breast or chicken balls"?

Finally arrived in Tel Aviv at around 10:30pm local time and took a taxi to my hotel. It's always one of the best things about arriving in a new country -- transport from the airport into the city. Tantalising. The driving is reassuringly manic and aggressive and loud. Why is it only hot countries where drivers are crazy? You'd think they'd be more laid-back. Also true-to-form was being ripped off by the taxi driver. The 90 shekels on the meter translates (I now know) into about 20 dollars, or as little as 13 on the black market. But I was assured it came out at 25, and paid up.

Tel Aviv is a bigger city than I'd imagined. The hotel is on the shore, with views over the city to the right, and the sea to the left:

It was after midnight when I finally got to my room, which, now that I'd blown my good intentions for the day, seemed a bit early to be turning in. So I went for a wander down on the beach, and ended up having a beer and a meal and chatting to some of the local youth. I see so little of the sea at home that it was great to just sit and watch it for a while.

Today I woke early and went for a long walk up the coast and into this part of the city, looking for running routes and getting myself oriented.

Tel Aviv seems a rather featureless place. Like a lot of modern Mediterranean/Middle-Eastern towns, it's a collection of concrete apartment blocks, palm trees, juice bars, whining scooters and wiry, nervous cats.

I was looking for a black-market money changing facility but failed. This is a laid-back place, and no one hassles you on the street. While it can be tiresome when you find yourself in places where you're never left alone, at least it's easy to get information and find deals on everything. Eventually I gave in and went to an official bureau de change where at least I got a better rate than the hotels are offering.

Spent the late morning and afternoon working in my hotel room before deciding, about six, that it was time to think about a run. It was still very humid, but I had to chance it, otherwise it might have got dark suddenly, and the opportunity would be lost.

It took quite a while for my GPS-driven speed and distance monitor to work out where I was. With all these satellites hovering over Iraq, I was expecting it to click in pretty quickly, but no, it took at least five minutes.

This gave me the chance to observe beach life. Lots of surfers and cyclists and games being played. There's a long series of about 70 steps down to the beach, split into three steep flights. The cyclists' game is to ride their bikes down them, amid much hollering and cheering.

Where does our fearlessness go to? Most of us, once past our teens, would be too scared to think about riding down those steps. We'd never make it without coming off. These kids are so confident, failure just isn't an option, and it seems to be this confidence that allows them to do it. Courage, it seems, makes success almost inevitable. Lack of self-confidence can bring only failure.

I ran for five miles, up the coast to Jaffa and back. It was a very tough run, and left me wondering how I'll get through the Great North Run in two weeks time. It was great to run alongside the sea, though the Tayelet (the Boardwalk) was crowded with families and lovers and cyclists and scooters and dogs. The atmosphere was strange. Imagine working in an air-conditioned kitchen where you had to keep reaching into the oven. It was claustrophobically hot and humid, but every few seconds there's be a blast of icy air from the sea.

There were quite a few other runners around, all of them tourists. Most were young and athletic, but I did manage to overtake a Japanese guy who looked in an even worse state than me. By the time I reached Jaffa I had slowed right down, and decided to go no further. I'll explore this old quarter another time.

The return journey was difficult, and I had to stop more than once. The humidity was one problem, but just as important I think were the excesses of yesterday, and this morning's long walk. In fact I have a whole stack of splendid excuses.

Problem: I've managed to leave my lycra undershorts at home, which, in these sweaty conditions, now means I have a couple of painful, chafed thighs to deal with. What are the chances of me being able to buy a pair of lycra shorts on a Saturday in Tel Aviv? Or even a jar of Vaseline?

Stay tuned to find out.

Sat 6 Sep 2003 Tel Aviv

What does Eyal Berkovitch look like? Answering this question is my best hope of working out which team is Israel and which is Slovenia. And what was that announcement about "Anglia" and "Dav-eed Beck-ham"? He's either just scored against Macedonia or been caught stealing an old car.

Earlier, I toyed with the idea of popping up the road to Molly Bloom's (yes, even Tel Aviv has an Irish bar), but a rare burst of common sense has kept me in my hotel room this evening. I'm working, but keeping one eye on the Slovenia - Israel game on TV. The Hebrew commentary doesn't mean a great deal to me, but it provides a bit of atmosphere. Just like the Russian commentary earlier, as I watched Ireland draw with Russia; and the French commentary in the France - England rugby, and this morning, the Spanish commentary of an Argentine league game.

The Argie game is the only one I've actually watched properly. Racing Club versus some unidentified team. They were 3-0 up at half time, but an injury time equaliser made it 3-3. I took an interest in this game as I actually know someone who supports Racing. Sebastian H Garcia, the sole member of the Buenos Aires QPR Supporters Club. He has often emailed me to describe the agonies of following Racing Club. At least now I'll have something to discuss with him, though I suspect he'll be as sick as an Amazonian parrot about the result.

In between this glut of work and televised sport, I wandered the streets looking for some petroleum jelly to salve my raw thighs. But the sabbath has shut almost everything down, and I come back empty-handed. While I was out I called in at an internet cafe to see if I could upload yesterday's entry, but they wouldn't let me.

No run today. I thought about it. Then thought about it some more at around 5pm. I succumbed to hunger instead, and ordered a tuna melt from room service. Curiously, they explained that they couldn't melt the cheese as it's the sabbath. So I had a tuna melt without the melt, and abandoned the idea of running. I'm not sure my thighs would have consented in any case. It means that I've still not done the 10 miler that I keep saying is essential before I do the GNR.

Today was my last chance of a long run for 6 days. Tomorrow (Sunday) is the start of this course, and I've been promised 12 hour days until Thursday. I intend to carry on with my early morning runs but I'm not likely to squeeze much more than three or four miles out of the time available. I'll see. If I wake up at 5am, who knows?

And I now know which team is Israel. They're losing 3-1.

English, Hebrew, Russian, French, Spanish. Only the words are different. Everything else is the same.

Sun 7 Sep 2003 Tel Aviv

"Revenge is coming. Israel has opened the doors of hell".

These are the latest comforting words from Hamas, following Israel's attempt to kill a Palestinian leader yesterday. The other big local news is the resignation of the Palestinian PM, Mahmoud Abbas, which is adding to the uncertainty round the city. This morning's Jerusalem Post was a gloomy enough breakfast read, but the real litmus test of public opinion came with my taxi ride to work. If you want to know the word on the streets, wherever you are in the world, ask a cabbie. This one had no doubt. "Arafat is the problem. He cannot move from terrorist to be a real leader of his people, and this is stopping everything. If he stays, there can be no peace. But if he goes, it will be war also. So peace is a very long way off. Until then, how many more deaths will it take?"

Well, in the words of the great Jewish prophet back in 1962 AD, "The answer my friend, is blowin' in the wind..."

I was up at six for another run along the sea front. I'd hoped to make it as far as Jaffa again, but I felt tired and listless, and turned back after a mile and a half, having decided to settle for three miles. But even this modest distance defeated me, and I ended up run-walking the last half mile. I don't think it was just my undoubted unfitness. The atmosphere is different here. Even this early in the morning it was hot, and the air felt heavy and humid. It just sucked the strength from me.

But at least I got out, and even if it wasn't a great training run, it did help to wake me up which was part of the intention.

Arrived at work at 9am, and didn't get out till 9pm. This seems likely to be the pattern for the week.

It's great to be here, but on a number of fronts it's quite hard work.

Mon 8 Sep 2003 Tel Aviv

Another long and tiring working day, but at least I managed a decent-ish run early this morning. After yesterday's fizzle-out, I decided to go back to basics, and ran-walked from the start: 5 minutes running, 1 minute walking. I did this for 40 minutes, then stopped, feeling I'd had a good workout. Perhaps this is how I should approach the Great North Run on Sunday week. Perhaps a 10:1 run:walk ratio? Hal Higdon reckons he (or was it his son?) once ran-walked a 2:28 marathon.

It's great to be out between six and six-thirty. The tide's coming in at that time, and it doesn't take much of a breeze to whip up the waves. Running along the Promenade you're liable to get a soaking as they crash over the sea wall. It hasn't happened yet, but it will.

Barring disaster, I'll definitely be doing the GNR. I've already missed two half marathons that I really wanted to do this year: Bath, back in March (after injuring a calf at Reading the previous week), and Bristol, which happened yesterday. Some great news from * (Griff from the forum), who mailed me to say he'd got a PB at Bristol. The world of running salutes him this morning...

And so to bed. I've another three days of this routine before the course ends. Friday and Saturday are free. I suspect I'll be too knackered on Friday to do too much. It might be a good day for a long run after a lie-in. On Saturday I hope to go to Jerusalem for the day. We'll see.

In the meantime, I've pretty much given up any hope of uploading this stuff before I return to Blighty on Sunday. The local internet caf� won't let a floppy disk near their machines, and at work, I'm trapped inside a grumpy firewall.

Thurs 11 Sep 2003 Tel Aviv

Any lingering doubts that Paula Radcliffe is stalking me can now, surely, be dismissed. FLM 2002, Chicago 2002, and now the Great North Run 2003. Heard today that she had risen to the Running Commentary Challenge, and will be there on the 21st after all. The record books show that I usually bring out the best in her, so I would get along to the bookies soon if I were you.

On Tuesday I continued the run-walk experiment, this time with a ratio of 9:1 running:walking. I like it. It's my best hope of getting from Newcastle to South Shields in one piece. In fact I'm feeling worryingly optimistic. I haven't run the distance since Reading, six months ago, but that doesn't mean I can't do it ten days from now. It's a psychological help more than a physical prerequisite.

The real test is whether my Hal Higdon cap turns up in time. I saw this highly desirable item advertised on Hal's website this morning, just as our final day's class was beginning. What are the fundamental secrets for a successful Documentum installation? Buggered if I know. I used this time to tap out a couple of emails to Rose Higdon, trying to ensure that my brilliant yellow V-Team cap arrives before the 20th September. If it gets here, I'll be OK. In a spirit of magnanimity, I've decided to award it to the final GNR finisher in my sub-race, currently comprising Painter, Platt, Radcliffe and me.

I've not run for two days, but late this afternoon I set off for an eight mile walk along the sea-front to Jaffa and back. Maybe I missed the centre of Jaffa, but there didn't seem to be a lot to see there. I saw several signs for Jaffa Gate, which my brain kept interpreting as Jaffa Cake. The place is much older than the rest of Tel Aviv, and has a stronger Islamic atmosphere. Dustier and more tatty, and distinctly down-at-heel. It felt a bit like Luton.

On the way back I stopped off at one of the caf�s on the promenade for a couple of large (660cl) glasses of the local beer, and a massive hamburger and dish of fries, followed by a slab of lemon and mint cheesecake. The waiter tried to talk me into a plate of salad to start, but I didn't want to go overboard on the calories.

Eventually got back to the hotel and booked a bus to Jerusalem for tomorrow morning.

There were two bomb attacks the other night. One here in Tel Aviv, and another in a coffee bar in Jerusalem. Seven people killed in each. The newspaper reports are graphic and chilling. "My hair was full of blood but it wasn't mine", was a line that stayed with me.

I don't want to exaggerate the problem. Most people just go about their business as normal. (Short of emigration, what's the alternative?) But there is a tension about the place. Every time a crowded bus goes past you wonder. And sitting in bars and caf�s, it's hard not to be constantly looking at the door to see who the guard is talking to. Nearly every restaurant, bar, office building and supermarket has a guard to challenge everyone trying to enter. The trouble is, most suicide bomb attacks are at places that have guards. They just try to walk past them, and detonate the explosives when stopped. Invariably the bomber, the guard and anyone sitting close to the door are killed.

But it will never happen to me...

Fri 12 Sep 2003 Tel Aviv

A remarkable day. I'd booked a bus tour to Jerusalem, but when I met up with the organiser this morning, I found that there was just one other person (a clean-cut, young South African called Stephen) who'd arranged a trip today. So instead of the expected ancient bus with no suspension, we had a roomy, air-conditioned Mercedes saloon and our own personal guide, a chap with the improbable name of Israel Rodrigues.

We spent an hour meandering south-west, being shown where David slew Goliath, where Abraham went to slaughter his son, where Samson and Delilah lived... that sort of thing. We also talked a lot of politics. I'd say it was best summed up by one of our guide's many jokes:

The President of the USA goes to God and asks when they would solve their all social problems. "Well", said God, "It will take a long time. Not in your lifetime." Then the President of Russia goes to God and asks when they might see an end to their economic problems. "Well", said God, "It will take a long time. Probably not in your lifetime." Finally, the President of Israel goes along and asks when the problem with Palestine might be solved. "Well", said God, "It will take a long time. Not in my lifetime."

Jerusalem is a truly extraordinary spectacle. Its epicentre -- the Old City, and much of the New -- lies sprawled along a massive valley floor, with seemingly dozens of satellite villages and new settlements peering down on it from the surrounding hills. Coming into the city by road, from whatever direction, you have several opportunities to stop and admire this quite amazing sight. Despite the new developments, there's an immediate appreciation of the ancientness of what you're seeing. When places like the Mount Of Olives and the Garden of Gethsemane are pointed out, and the Temple Mount, and the tombs of Solomon and King David, you can feel your mouth drying.

After this aerial survey, we drove down into the city, parking up close to one of the gates of the Old City.

I'm not going to describe all the things we saw today. Any tourist guide to Jerusalem will list them. But a couple of things that stood out:

The Holocaust Museum. What a terrible place this is. "Terrible" because of what it commemorates. The photographs, the diaries, the towels from Auschwitz, the desecrated ancient scrolls. All these were bad enough, but I think it was the bars of soap "made from the molten fat of Jews burnt in the ovens of Belsen" that was the worst thing.

And the Wailing Wall. We've all seen the pictures of the holy wall itself, and people praying, but I didn't realise there was an adjoining, enclosed chamber where the real action takes place. This was a very surprising experience: not just the amazing appearance and behaviour of the Hassidic Jews, but their almost total indifference to me, an obvious Gentile tourist with his blinking digital camcorder.

The place was dark and echo-ey and claustrophobic and profoundly spiritual. Humming, quite literally, with prayer and agonised incantation. Many of these guys were in trances, and seemed to be dancing and giggling, or bowing frantically at the wall. For me, it was a experience akin to time travel - in two senses. Apart from the obvious, it reminded me of some of those moments in my trips to India and Nepal when I was in my twenties -- visits to holy Hindu places like Varanasi on the Ganges, or Pasupatinath in Kathmandu. Undoubted "Crikey" moments.

I don't want to offend anyone, but it has to be said that some of these chaps reminded me of characters from the Lord Of The Rings film. Particularly the fellow in the second picture.

Another experience worth mentioning was the walk along the Via Dolorosa, which follows the Fourteen Stations of the Cross. In theory, this traces the journey of Christ with the cross on his way up to Calvary; though as with many of the sacred sites in Jerusalem, it seems likely that these are symbolic rather than actual. Apart from anything else, in a city that goes back three or four thousand years, it's certain that the ground levels have changed. This is borne out by some of the excavation work that shows the streets of the really ancient city to be a good twenty feet lower than the 'current Ancient' city. It seems likely that the general areas are about right, but little evidence exists to show that this really was the slab where someone called Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross, especially as it exists inside a church which was built about 1500 years after his apparent crucifixion.

It was somewhere in my mid-teens, after reading that brilliant essay by Bertrand Russell, Why I Am Not A Christian that I felt able, finally, to release myself from the Catholic fait accompli I'd been presented with at birth. But even so, old habits die hard, and I felt compelled to drop a few shekels into the box and light a couple of candles. I did it out of respect to my parents, who will be delighted to hear about it, rather than out of respect to 'God'.

After a tasty al fresco falafel, I popped into a gift shop to buy a Crucifixion fridge magnet and a celebratory Resurrection mug. As I came out of the shop, our guide was talking excitedly on his cell phone, and looking anxious. He grabbed my sleeve and said "Come, we must find a different way back. There's been a shooting."

It wasn't panic, but there was a definite air of tension in the souk as we made our way out of the Old City through the Christian and Armenian Quarters. People were shouting, and shopkeepers were pulling down their shutters with an air of resignation. It's in a situation like this that you appreciate being with a guide who's been taking people round the place since the 1960s. I don't know where we were, but spent ten minutes or so hurrying along narrow alleys and up and down worn flights of steps, eventually emerging just opposite the city gate we'd entered by.

(Later, back in Tel Aviv, I called in at an internet caf� to investigate the story on the Jerusalem Post website. It seems that after midday prayers a group of "several hundred" young Moslems began stoning the guys at the Wailing Wall. They were chased by police back into the Moslem Quarter and shots were fired into the air. I don't know how it developed from there.)

I saw several fantastic things today. I don't yet know how much of a landmark it was -- it will take a while to tease out the lessons fully, and be able to articulate them. And no, it certainly wasn't a religious conversion. If anything, something pretty much like the exact opposite. I've seen enough fanaticism today to last me into my dotage. Jewish, Christian, Moslem, Nazi... it's all there, laid out for the traveller to Jerusalem. It seems to me that most of the great channels through which human history must flow, have been carved by small groups who have to live beyond the mainstream; whose fundamentalism forces them to reside on the edges of madness. Their search for some unattainable, non-existent purity draws them through lifelong misery towards certain failure, and the rest of us seem destined to be dragged down in their wake. I'm angry about this. It's selfishness. This kind of religious and political bigotry amount to a kind of despotic egocentricity. Well thanks a bunch, God. You blew it big time.

There was, at least, one mention of running today, though it wasn't too encouraging. When we were discussing our guide's military service (and today's guided tour included a trip around his corrugated torso, which turns out to be as graphic a map of Israel's recent military history as anything you'll find in a book), he mentioned that national service gets scaled down as they get older. Instead of having to donate a month or so each year, the period gradually gets shortened. "After all", he said, "We all know that over the age of forty you can't run any more".

Quite.

Sun 14 Sep 2003

Shalom England.

I'm in that state of mini culture-shock in reverse that you get when you return home after being somewhere very different.

It was another interesting day yesterday. I took a minibus from the hotel to visit some places in the south of the country. There were three of us to start off with this time: an earnest young Hungarian guy, a garrulous South African lady, and me. First, we headed down to Jerusalem again where we picked up a totally silent Japanese guy. As the trip proceeded he just sat there, grinning contentedly. Reminded me of the Red Indian Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.

It's only a mile or so beyond Jerusalem that the deserts of the West Bank begins. The controversial new Israeli settlements are clearly visible along the tops of the hills that run alongside the Ayalon Highway. On the slopes below are dozens of Bedouin camps. At one point we passed a goatherd squatting on a hillside among his flock. It could have been a scene from biblical times -- apart from the satellite TV dish attached to the roof of his tent. It's weird to think of him lying there under the stars on his sheepskin rug, munching his falafel and puffing on his hookah, watching Aston Villa playing Southampton.

A few miles further on we pass the Ramallah junction, where Arafat has been holed up for many months now. Just beyond that, over to the left across a few miles of flat desert, Jericho is clearly visible. Before the intifada, Jericho was visited by many Israeli Jews, but now it's off limits. Up to the Jordanian border, where we swung a sharp right to join the northern tip of the Dead Sea, and the start of a long drive down the Israeli bank of the sea. Which of course is a lake, but is called a sea. The Israelis like to talk about their three main waterways as "the Dead, the Red and the Med".

All this area that we'd covered up till now, since Jerusalem, was Jordan before 1967. This area, the West Bank, was the part of the country I'd been warned off by the security people at Heathrow, but in reality it seemed safe enough -- particularly on the main roads. We passed through a few military checkpoints but were just waved through at all apart from one, where we were asked languid questions by some tooled-up soldier with wraparound reflective shades which, unfortunately, always make me grin. It wasn't really a grinning occasion, but we got through.

The kibbutz, apparently, is going out of fashion but most of the ones that are left are round this area. They were obvious by the big date orchards that separated them from the road. I was delighted to see ostriches wandering round them - the first time I'd come across them in the wild. They make me grin as well, so it was turning into quite a jolly trip, with much banter from all except the Japanese chap who continued smiling, but said nothing.

By now the landscape was all desert and mountains to our right, and the Dead Sea to our left, with Jordan on the far side. Our destination was a place called Masada, a mountain which hid King Herod's secret bunker. Quite a place. These days you can get a cable-car up to the top but from ancient times until fairly recently, there was no option but to walk/climb. This is what it looks like:

We were told that before the intifada they were getting 5000 visitors a day. Now it is barely more than a hundred or two. The place has a great story to tell, and was last year named a Unesco World Heritage site. Rather than repeat it, if you want to know the story of Herod and, later, the Zealots, and its rediscovery in the 19th Century, just click here.

Pointless Activity No. 318: Deciding to become a purveyor of sun-tan lotion and inhalers on the shore of the Dead Sea...

One of the interesting things about that picture of Masada is that the top of the mountain is sea level. The Dead Sea and surrounding area is actually about 400 metres below sea level. In fact, it's the lowest place on earth. I didn't notice much difference myself, but apparently the air is much easier to breathe, and is a popular place for asthmatics. It's also impossible to get sun burnt, we were assured.

This claim was put to the test shortly after we came down from Masada, when it was time to go floating in the Dead Sea. It really is a bizarre experience. You can lie back and just fall asleep, floating in the water if you wish. It's disconcerting; you just lose control of your body. Everything you thought you knew about swimming ceases to apply. You walk out into the water, and the deeper you go the harder it is to keep control of your legs because they want to rise to the surface. Imagine having floats attached to your feet. If you walk out far enough, you just suddenly flop onto your back, as your legs shoot upwards.

Some way out from the shore, a rope is stretched across the water, and I just kept floating out to it whether I wanted to or not. It was while I was hanging onto it, having a breather, that something remarkable happened. The Japanese guy floated past, and as he did so, he opened his mouth and said: "Good experience!" That was the only sound he made all day.

I think I can see the potential benefit of a flotation tank. It's really very relaxing, just to lie back, shut your eyes and think of anything but England.

The downside of the heavily-salty, mineralised water is that it tastes rotten, and is actually quite dangerous if swallowed. But a really worthwhile experience.

A few other diversions, like lunch at a kibbutz, and some ibex-spotting, then we began the journey back. The one remaining excitement came as we drove through Jerusalem. Being the Sabbath, the Ultra-Orthodox Jews were out in force. These guys are bitterly opposed to contraventions of the Sabbath, one of which is driving. So we found ourselves being shouted at, and at one junction, there was a 'situation' developing between the police and a group of Hassidic Jews who were trying to drag dustbins into the road to form a barricade to stop us driving through. Crazy place.

And that was just about the end of the trip. I had thought that I might possibly squeeze in a run when I returned to the hotel, but this idea was abandoned when I had quite a severe attack of gout in my left foot. I've mentioned this problem before. In fact, it was one of the reasons I started running in the first place -- to improve circulation. It happens very rarely these days. It might have flared up here because of all the red meat I've been eating in the last week.

So, with my foot throbbing with pain all yesterday evening and this morning, a run was out of the question. Instead, for the first time on this trip, I sat in the hotel lobby bar and had a few beers as I tried out their wireless internet connection.

This was a really good trip. I learnt a lot about what I went there to learn about -- and a load of other stuff that I didn't know I needed to learn about.

Israel is a different country to me now, and the politics of the region have been illuminated in a new and surprising way. I've done a lot of talking on this trip -- much more than has been recorded here. I talked with a lot of 'ordinary Israelis' about their lives and their history, both modern and ancient, and they've made a generally positive impression on me. One thing that's surprised me is that I've not heard much anti-Palestinian sentiment. Anti-Arafat, yes, but not strongly anti-Palestinian or anti-arab. The general feeling is impatience for everyone to get back to work. Arafat is seen as an obstacle, and as unrepresentative of the general Palestinian population. The intifada is seen as being damaging to the Palestinian cause, and not promoting it. For them, the current stalemate is pointless, and there's frustration with the politicians that they can't sort out this problem.

In the meantime they continue to worry about their vulnerability and find it hard to understand why the suicide bombings on buses and in public places don't cause a greater sense of outrage in the world outside.

And I worry about not doing my ten mile run...

One final thing... the sad news that Johnny Cash had died. A unique presence while he was here.

I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.
When I hear that whistle blowin', I hang my head and cry.

From Folsom Prison Blues, one of those great couplets.

Mon 15 Sep 2003

Something pretty amazing happened this evening.

I went off at about 7pm to do my 3 or 4 miles. My foot was still aching a bit, and I felt sleepy and utterly unenthusiastic. But inexplicably I ended up running TWELVE miles. It was slow -- in fact the 12 miles took me a lot longer to complete than I hope the half marathon will take, but who cares?

The secret ingredient was the decision to run-walk. I started off with the idea of walking 1 minute for every 9 run, but I kept losing track as my watch resets the display every mile. So I changed the plan and walked a minute every mile, and two minutes every three miles. I was amazed at the difference this made. After 5 or 6 miles I still felt fresh and strong, and was still feeling OK after 9 or 10. After this point I did begin to tire, and more important I began to feel twinges in both calves. After my two calf injuries this year I didn't want to take any chances, so I slowed right down and eventually walked most of the last half mile.

It's by far the longest run I've done since the Reading Half in March, and has given me the confidence to look forward to the GNR on Sunday.

Too knackered to write more.

Wed 17 Sep 2003

These scales just can't be right. After an entire day of fasting I find I weigh two pounds more than I did this time yesterday morning. How can this be? I'd already cheated and revised my target GNR weight upwards by a whopping ten pounds. I now find that I have to lose nearly two pounds a day between now and Sunday to achieve even that doctored target. Not ideal news in this pre-GNR week, but I'll have to live with it. At least the surplus ballast will give me extra momentum once I've managed to launch myself in the direction of South Shields.

No run yesterday. The backs of my legs were still smarting from the heroic effort of the night before, and I've become ultra-sensitive to twinges in this area after the problems of this year. Calf muscles are a sore point, one might say. Ho ho ho.

It's not often you receive a cheque from an international marathon guru but this was my experience yesterday. I received my smart new, bright yellow, Hal Higdon "V-Team" baseball cap. Also in the envelope was a cheque for �3.94 made payable to Hal Higdon, but endorsed on the back as payable to me. What's this all about? The mystery deepened further when I read the attached letter which was from a folk music shop in Edinburgh. Eh? It was a VAT refund on some items bought there in 1999, and the efficient Scots were only now getting round to refunding his VAT. So? And there was a note from Hal to me saying that he had decided to award this cheque to the first UK cap-buyer. Hmm.

I suspect that US banking laws are different from our own, as of course I can't pay a cheque (or "check" as they will insist on mis-spelling the word) into my own account. Needless to say, there is a sharp letter of complaint on the way to Mr Higdon.

Not really. I decided that anyone who invests in the British folk music industry can't be all bad. I wonder what he bought? I know for a fact that he is on speaking terms with his neighbours, so it can't have been an anthology of bagpipe music.

Which reminds me of my favourite Gary Larsen "Far Side" cartoon (which I know I've mentioned before, but it was a long time ago). It depicts the gates of Heaven and Hell. At the entrance to Heaven, a saintly fellow is shown playing a harp, while outside the entrance of Hell is a devilish figure playing an accordion.

Good old Hal. He found himself in hot water recently on his own website forum [server down at the time of writing]. He's quite a movie buff, and posted a message recently to mark the death of Leni Riefenstahl, and to note that she'd made one of the most remarkable films ever about athletics (Olympia, the documentary about the 1936 Berlin Olympics). He was instantly submerged beneath a wave of accusations of being a Nazi sympathiser which he gallantly fought off, but it was a bloody battle while it lasted.

Ever noticed that those who denounce bigotry appear to be among the least tolerant of people...?

Thurs 18 Sep 2003

GNR minus 3 days. Tomorrow we set off for the north-east.

Beginning to feel quite apprehensive about the race now. It will be a slog.

Every time a race appears I vow to do things better than last time. Always top of the list is that I'll get to my target weight.

Don't even ask... I have another 3 days to lose 7.8 pounds. Still, it could have been worse. If I hadn't carried out some attempted face-saving butchery at the beginning of this week, it would have been 17.8 pounds. Just how pathetic is that?

Tues 23 Sep 2003 -- Great North Run

Surely no one sets out on a career in radio, hoping to become a traffic reporter? So where do they all come from?

The Traffic Desk strikes me as a kind of holding cell; a place to store failed broadcasters on their way out of the profession. I was able to gather plenty of evidence on the way up to the north east on Friday. "Long queues on the A1 near Durham. Particularly bad southbound. And northbound is even worse."

Even more baffling is the army of civilian volunteers patrolling the roads network on behalf of the radio stations, with their vigilante-like nicknames. "The Prince of Darkness of the A14" was one of todays's reporters. Make that the "Prince of Dorkness". I could imagine him turning up on his blind dates wearing shades and a bootlace tie, smeared with Lynx aftershave, his favourite chat-up line at the ready: "Reckon I got more Willie Nelson LPs than absolutely ANYONE... in the North Peterborough area."

So where were we? We were travelling from Berkshire to Gateshead.

It was good to escape from gardening guilt for a couple of days, and to head north-east for the first time in seven years. Apart from the traffic reports, there is nothing to say about the journey as far as Leeds. The M1 isn't much cop as a muse.

It struck me that Yorkshire gets posher as you go north. I like South Yorkshire, but it's raw and uncompromising. Sheffield, Barnsley, Rotherham, Doncaster are all places I could tell painful stories about, and they all took place on cold, dark nights. West Yorkshire I know much better, having survived there for around eleven years. It's a paranoid, curmudgeonly sort of county, though it will become more civilised in time, if it continues its policy of opening up lines of communication with the outside world.

Escaping across the border into North Yorkshire, you feel a sense of immediate relief. Away from enemy territory. It's a sort of very North Sussex. Calling in at Betty's in Harrogate to stock up on curd tarts, fat rascals and giant tea-cakes, you feel safe again. Back with your own. After Harrogate, it was on up the smaller roads through more deft, self-confident places like Ripon and Thirsk, before crossing into Teesside.

We were getting hungry by now, and stopped off at a good up-yer-sleeve restaurant south of Middlesborough for M's belated birthday meal. With about 40 hours to go until the race, I felt able to allocate myself a single shot of alcoholic stuff, and opted for some inoffensive house white. Not a bad bit of scran, though I'm not much of a judge of these things, and usually defer to M's superior, and more instinctive taste buds. Her verdicts are often mystifying but I know better than to question her wisdom. She sampled my main course and dismissed it as tasting "too much like fish". Always a danger with sea bass, unfortunately, though I felt it best to keep this opinion to myself.

It had been raining since before Leeds, and now it was teeming, and would continue to do so for another twenty four hours. We continued up the A19 a bit further than intended, and ended up hacking cross-country through that swathe of inhospitable names south of Newcastle: Hetton-le-Hole, Houghton-le-Spring, Jarrow... the darkness and the rain making them seem far less welcoming than I know them to be.

It was still tipping down on Saturday afternoon when I went off to see Newcastle play Bolton. It confirmed what I'd long suspected about the Premiership - that it isn't really much good. The players seem uninterested. Perhaps it really is just a sort of cultured nonchalance, as their supporters say it is; a fieldful of flickering skill, tantalising and toying with us. But it sure looked like ineptitude and bone-idleness to me. Oh to have been at a real football match. This was all icing and no cake.

I was hoping to see Bolton win. About 4-0 would have done the job. Not that I particularly like Bolton, or particularly dislike Newcastle, who are nothing like as pleasingly reckless as they were under Keegan. I just thought it would be more culturally interesting. It's a British thing. (There's a joke in there about seeing 50,000 people in pain two days in a row, but that would be too easy). Anyway, the match flopped to a soggy 0-0 and we all sloped off into the drizzle.

Carbo-loading eventually got done, though it was close. No pasta to be found in Gateshead, so we headed back into the city centre to find a Chinese restaurant where I could guzzle noodles and rice. I have to believe the widely-accepted wisdom that this sort of meal is a good thing the evening before a race. It doesn't always feel like it.

I wasn't sure how I'd feel when I woke on Sunday morning. Fear? Apprehension? Resignation? No. I was surprised to find a sense of mild excitement waiting for me. Why that should have surprised me, I don't know. I suppose because it had been so long since I'd run this far, and because I felt so undertrained.

We'd planned to leave at nine, but at nine-thirty we were still hanging around the hotel. The phone rang. It was Nigel Platt, asking where I was. When I said "a hotel room in Gateshead", he seemed so taken aback that for a panicky moment I thought I must have got the time wrong. Perhaps the race was starting at 9:40, not 10:40? But no, he was just surprised that I wasn't at the start, enjoying the atmosphere as much as he obviously was. We wished each other luck and said we'd meet up in the beer tent after the race.

We arrived at the start about half an hour later. After fighting our way through a dense cloud of Ralgex or something similar, we found several tens of thousands of happy people. Quite a sight. The weather was perfect: sunny but cool. M took some great home video of Paula Radcliffe warming up in front of us, then setting off on her record-breaking run. After she'd vanished into the distance, we realised the camera hadn't been recording.

After M had left to save the car from being towed away, I went off to find my place in the line. It was hard to work out where to be. The seven and eight minute-mile areas were full of people who seemed unlikely to be able to manage double that pace. I kept on walking back until I reached a point where I couldn't see the start of the crowd and couldn't see the end. I guessed this was probably halfway, and stopped there. Ten minutes later, we were away.

It took about eighteen minutes to reach the start line. From there, the shuffle continued for the first mile or two. That said, the first and second mile markers always come more quickly than I expect in these big races, and the pace is always slightly quicker than it feels - though at 10:35 and 10:40, they were hardly quick.

I passed the first walkers just after two minutes into the race, and there were many thousands more through the thirteen miles. I was one myself for at least one minute each mile, and towards the end, longer than this. There has been much heated debate on the Runners World forum about walkers, and whether the large number of people who walked most of the race are an essential part of the fabric of the GNR, or just a bloomin' nuisance. Is the Great North Run a proper race or just a happy-clappy happening?

The obvious answer is that it's both, and neither should be allowed to dominate the other. For the race to work well however, there must be greater tolerance of the other camp. It's frustrating and puzzling that the organisers make no effort to educate new runners and first-time entrants. I don't think the majority of walkers are deliberate troublemakers and anarchists. They want to start near the front because they know they are going to be slow, and think that if they get off quicker they will finish quicker. It doesn't make a lot of sense as they'll still take the same amount of time to complete the course, and the nearer the front they are, the more people they will interfere with. If they understood this, they might be happy to start further back. And if they are going to walk, they should stick to the left hand side. And if they are going to suddenly stop running, they should look behind them first. Just a few simple rules and guidelines that the organisers could promote, and everyone would be happier. I wish someone had told me these things when I did my first race.

It was very clear early on that I wasn't going to turn in a good time. The crowds, my unfitness and the general light-heartedness of the occasion made this a strangely unimportant race to have to do quickly, or even to want to do quickly. And it was much hillier than expected. To be honest, it wasn't really a race at all. Eventually, I crossed the finish line nearly two hours and forty minutes after starting. I didn't really care about the time, and I didn't even care that I was overtaken by an eight-foot McCain's Oven Chip on the home straight. Much.

I felt alright. Legs a bit tired but the decision to take it easy, enjoy the day and take walk-breaks made a difference. I still had enough energy to totter over to the beer tent where, miraculously, I found M - but no Nigel or Ian. Hung around for a while, then found a pub and had a couple of faraway pints, and fish and chips on a plate the size of a dustbin lid.

So. The Great North Run - how great is it?

Well, it's big. Very big. The biggest race in history (if the announcer is to be believed) with 47000 entrants. How many of those entrants turned up, I don't know. On nearly every front, it's a thoroughly laudable occasion. One of those events that generates a lot of publicity, that sets seeds in the minds of couch potatoes and draws new people into running, that raises a fortune for charity, and gives many thousands of people a lot of pleasure. The medal's nice too.

On the frontline, there aren't a lot of negatives. Some attention needs to be paid to the walking problem (and yes, I ran-walked myself, and don't exclude myself from that problem). Although well-organised in terms of the logistics and the on-site facilities and the signage, not a lot of thought has been put into deciding what sort of event it is. Or if it has, the results of such ponderings haven't filtered through to the runners. Mass-participation beano? Or bona-fide half marathon running race?

It can be both of these things simultaneously, but in that case, there needs to be better instruction, and perhaps a radical rethink about how the start is organised. One obvious suggestion is to ask people to estimate finishing times, and issue colour-coded numbers. Matching pens would then have to be introduced, and these would need gentle marshalling on the day. It would cost money, it would increase the need for helpers, and it wouldn't guarantee that 'serious runners' wouldn't be impeded, but it would improve the quality of the race, and it would make most people happier.

At present there seems to be a kind of self-education system. The running world is divided between one-timers who are pissed off with this Great Run nonsense, and who'll never do it again, and on the other side, those who have pulled themselves through a kind of apprenticeship where they've passed from frustration into sentimental enlightenment. "I learnt long ago that the Great North Run is all about having a great time, not running a great time." (That's a made-up quote, but it's the kind of thing that I've bee reading on the running forums this week.)

Where am I on this? Hmm. Fences can be surprisingly comfortable. The GNR is one of those happenings that I'm glad I've been a part of, but probably wouldn't do again - at least not for a while. The main reason is not so much to do with congestion on the route, or the massive delays getting out of the car park in South Shields. They are unavoidable. It's other things. For us, the north east is a very long way off -- we clocked nearly 800 miles getting there and back. The race itself isn't cheap to enter (�29), and if you live where we do, you have to make a weekend of it. And apart from expense, there are several other events on around the same time that I want to do - in particular the New Forest Half and Marathon.

No. When all's said and done, I can't really be bothered with the GNR hype. I entered the race, and bought my hotel room, in November 2002. Even then, ten months before the event, I had to book at least a two-night stay to guarantee a room at the inn. Nirvana, the enterprise behind these "Great" runs, own nearly all the accommodation in the Newcastle area for the entire weekend. They own the race, the accommodation, the TV rights, the lead participants. The Great North Run people do to Newcastle what Microsoft does to my computer, and I think it's this I don't like much. It might explain why the event itself is slightly schizophrenic. The run itself is enjoyable, and I'd recommend it. It's all the stuff around it I'm not so keen on.

The delay in getting out of South Shields meant I missed most of the Manchester United v Arsenal game on TV, though I did catch the only interesting bits - the sending-off of Vieira, Van Nistelrooy's penalty miss and the post-match argey-bargey. If most of my worst suspicions about the Premiership were reawakened by the limp spectacle at St James's Park on Saturday, this pretty much confirmed them. More entertaining were the back-page headlines I noticed over breakfast the next morning (yesterday). One was "SHAMED", while the other said: "VAN NISTELROOY JOSTLED AS UNATTRACTIVE ENCOUNTER DESCENDS INTO RANCOUR." One was from the Sun, the other from the Independent, though I can't recall which went with which.

Thurs 25 Sep 2003

That's odd -- the GNR report seems to have lost its final paragraph, which was a brief mention of Monday morning. We eventually tracked down the Baltic Gallery next to the new bridge over the Tyne. The bridge is fantastic, and I'm sure the gallery will be -- but at the moment it suffers from being almost totally empty. I wasn't sure if they were making a statement, or if they'd built the gallery but just forgotten to put things in it for people to look at. There are 3 exhibits on the ground floor, and a video installation on the 3rd. Apart from that, not a sausage.

It's Thursday, and I've not run since Sunday. Whenever I do a race, and particularly a half marathon or longer, I somehow get it into my head that that's it. I've done what I set out to do, and now I can get on with real life again. But a few days later, I wake up to the realisation that I have to start all over again with a new target.

And the new target is...? The Great South Run, a ten miler in Portsmouth on October 12th. A shame that it's the day after the QPR v Brentford game AND Turkey v England. Normally, such a schedule would be washed down with plenty of beer, but that would not be a great idea.

There is also a good possibility that I'll enter the Brighton 10k in November, the weekend before we go off to Spain for a week. There is an outside chance of a race in Spain, but I've imposed a press embargo on that for the moment.

Tomorrow morning, I hope to get out for a brief run.

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