I want to thank everyone who sponsored me for running in this past Friday's marathon to benefit the Schneider Hospital.

235,000 NIS was raised for the hospital due to this event. While I raised just a small portion of that, the amount raised is astounding considering there were only 25 runners. So, again, thank you for being a sponsor and for being part of such a great effort.

One more thing, on a more personal note, it was an amazing experience to be a part of.

I have found running in Israel to be very personal and achievement oriented. Maybe it is different abroad where there is a strong culture of running for charities. Here in Israel though that is not the culture. I know one can run for any of a variety of charities and organizations in the Jerusalem Marathon, but those groups are relatively new and small in comparison to the overall number of runners. Most runners in Israel, that I am aware of and form my experience, are running for personal achievement - whether it is speed, distance, motivation, challenge or whatever goal and objective a person might set for himself.

Being part of the Schneider Marathon was completely different. The run was not timed or tracked. It was so not timed that I had not even checked my race time until someone asked me my time a couple hours after it was over. It was intimate, it was friendly and it was for a good cause. It was being part of something good.

Everybody that was there was there to be a part of it, each in a different way, because it was something good - not for personal achievement. Whether it was the people biking along the route offering assistance, drinks and food to runners, whether it was people standing for hours in the middle of nowhere just to make sure a runner would not miss a certain turn, whether it was someone manning a water station for a couple hours in the middle of nowhere, whether it was the organizers or the people running the event at the end to provide some fun for kids, the photographers who spent the day involved, the drivers bringing runners' bags to the finish line or the drivers securing the runners along the roads (that were not closed so deemed dangerous).. everybody was there to be a part of something good -a girl who was healed form her lymphoma and wanted to help the hospital that provided the care. At a time when so many are sick and so many tragedies occur, and unfortunately we all know too many, it was great to be a part of something so focused on just good and on the other. It was an entirely different experience than running the previous marathons I ran.

When the pictures will become available I will add a few to this post..