Why running is like life. Or vice versa.

Ok, yes this is an old cliché and totally not original, but if these thoughts have been bouncing around in my head on runs, I must get them out! Call it an exercise in jazzing up a tired metaphor.

There are easy parts: where you’re coasting along and feeling great like you could go on forever. No effort required - your legs and lungs and heart are a well-oiled machine.

And then, bam: a stone trips you up. Your left foot trips you up. You didn’t even see it coming, but you’re down. Hopefully it’s minor, and after hopping on one foot and then the other to assess the damage, with some light self-swearing for being a clutz, you’re off again, with maybe a nice bloody elbow or bruised knee to prove your hardcore-ness.

Sometimes it’s serious, and you have to stop. But you haven’t really stopped, you’re just in healing-phase instead of running-phase, and it will still build you into a better runner, just less obviously-so. The hardest part is to be smart enough to know when to leave the healing phase and enter back into the running phase: not too soon but not too late.

Sometimes the obstacle is much greater than a rock or a rogue left foot. Sometimes something impassable is in front of you – a fallen tree, a wall, the edge of a cliff perhaps. You stop, wondering where to go, because you’ve come to far to turn around and go back. So you go around. Sometimes that means going seemingly sideways for miles, but it’s better than going backwards. Soon you’ll be able to cross to the other side and keep moving confidently forward.

A hill is not one of these obstacles, no matter how big and scary it seems at the bottom. In this case, no change of direction is needed. Just a deep breath, good form, small steps, and the humility to move at a slower pace than what you’re used to on flat ground. In really dire circumstances, throw the form part out of the window, and just put your head down and use brute force to get to the top.

Don’t anticipate the hills that may be in the future, they will only cause you to seize up and slow down in the present, before it’s time.

Sometimes you move through familiar territory, where you know every turn and every step. While you can make great pace here, it is easy to coast without assessing how you feel. On the other hand, sometimes you find yourself in strange neighborhoods, senses heightened but pace lowered. Even if you feel slightly lost, you usually can sense the general direction you want to be going. Maybe you won’t get there in the most efficient way, but just having your wits about you to know more or less where you are will get you there.

Sometimes it feels like everything is going wrong – there’s a storm, the wind is moving in circles and always in your face, your shoes keep coming untied, and you just feel like sitting to let it all pass over you. Running through the storm is a much more exhilarating way to get out of it than to sit and passively let it roll by.

It’s fun to get caught up in all the extra toys and gadgets and wicking materials and accessories and shoes guaranteed to make you fly and all of that. Just don’t forget that all you really need to run is simply your body.

In the middle of a tough part, it’s easy to look only a few feet in front of you, staring at the road hoping it will end soon. Look up – you could be missing an amazing view that puts everything into perspective.

I almost died today. Or felt like it. In my head, parking a few km down the mountain to start my usual Saturday 20-24km run would mean my run would be flat.

The run was beautiful, looping around trails in the mountains outside Jerusalem, near Givat Yearim and Kesalon:

Problem was, it wasn't flat. Not even a little bit.

During all those yellow/orange/red sections - so, like, an hour+ - I was kicking myself for not making gazpacho yesterday. It would have tasted amazing post-run (although, let's face it, my running socks probably would have tasted amazing provided they were chilled first). I had stocked up on extra veggies at the market especially with this recipe in mind. I made it once before, and it's lovely. Granted, my recipe looks a bit different from the published recipe on Epicurious.com, in that I entirely ignore the quantities (do people really measure out vegetable amounts in recipes?!). Like most recipes, I tend to use them as guidelines, rather than hard-and-fast rules. I'm by no means a seasoned chef, but I know my way around the kitchen enough to feel confident tweaking recipes even if I've never followed them before - it's just a matter of knowing which things you can change or substitute (# of garlic cloves) and which things are best left alone (flour:sugar:egg ratios in baking). Of course, if a recipe involves yeast, the only thing I change is adding the instruction "hold your breath and pray."

Well, after a fantastic banana-pear-yogurt-milk-flax-peanut butter smoothie (thankfully I did not have to eat my socks), I set to work making the gazpacho I spent 7 brutal miles drooling over.

First things first:

Because cooking isn't cooking without a glass of wine.
Please note the still-wet bottles from my water belt. I have an amazing transition time in my running-drinking biathlon.


One of my favorite things about living in Israel is the plethora of amazing fresh produce. Cucumbers here have FLAVOR. Plus, you don't have to peel them, because their skins aren't made of wax. And, it's cheap - peppers right now are about 4 shekels/kilo, which works out to about $1/kilo, which works out to 45c/pound. So many conversions, so little time.

Ingredients all assembled, I set to chopping. And chopping. Like I said, I didn't measure anything, I just made sure I had room left in the bowl for the liquid ingredients and that all the colors were in a nice proportion. Final count: 2 peppers (one yellow, one orange), 3 tomatoes, 3 cucs, a handful of cilantro, 2 little red onions, one hot pepper, cumin, pepper, homemade chicken stock, the remainder of the bottle of white wine vinegar, a 3-second pour of olive oil, one liter tomato juice, juice from half a lemon. Plus, the mashed garlic-salt-egg concoction (with 3 cloves and sea salt) and breadcrumbs to thicken.

  Before:                                            

                      
After:

It's now merrily chilling, and unless we eat during the Germany-Argentina game, it will be dinner. Unless Ron gets to it first, I already had to keep his nose out of the bowl once!