A trip into Tel Aviv

Tomorrow is the Tel Aviv Marathon. It is being run as part of the festivities in honor of Tel Aviv celebrating its 100th birthday.

The planning of it was pretty unprofessional, as it is scheduled for the end of April which can be brutally hot weather in Tel Aviv. It turns out that the weather is beautiful, but it could have been brutal. Because of it Tel Aviv was unable to attract the top level runners of both the world, and of Israel. Also the scheduling was problematic from a marathon schedule point of view. Something to do with the schedule of other marathons just run and that will be run soon. This one just did not fit in properly.

Regardless of the real pros not participating, I will be running the 10km race. I did not train for the full marathon, and could not pull it together at the last minute. I kind of feel bad about it now. I just went down to the staging area. I had to pick up my running packet - some paperwork, my number, the GPS chip and my tshirt - so I had to go down there. It is really beautiful. the weather is great, it is right off the beach and looks like it is going to be a wonderful event. I will soak it in for the 10km, and only wish I had motivated myself to push for the full 42km. oh well.

On the way back, I took a taxi back to work. the taxi driver was a bit crazy, tapping on the windows of other cars while sitting at red lights. he got upset at other drivers for their weaving and not paying attention to the road. he banged on the window of one driver who was starting to drift into our lane and then started screaming at her. After that, he was complaining about how bad these drivers are. I am confident that had he been looking at the car we were in, from a different car, he would have screamed about the driver of this taxi (himself really) as well, considering how much he was trying to squeeze in between cars, running lights at the last moment and sitting in the middle of the intersection in traffic, etc.