Hey all, my first post on ST, just wanted to share this recent experience, hopefully it may be interesting to some of you.
I just returned from an 11-day trip to Israel. I’m sure some of you have heard of the free birthright trips for anyone between the ages of 18-26 who have a Jewish parent. It’s an incredible adventure, extremely fun and interesting, and most importantly, FREE, but the one big downside was that it was definitely going to throw a wrench into my IMFL training.
Obviously with safety concerns in Israel, there are strict rules about staying with the group at all times, so it was going to be very tricky for me to be able to sneak any runs in. I definitely wasn’t bringing my bike, so the best I was hoping for was to get a few swims in while at the beach, and maybe get lucky and have a hotel with a treadmill…
Additionally, the itinerary of these trips is ridiculous. Practically every day except Saturday is a 6:30 wakeup call and then a non-stop action packed day touring around the country, usually ending with a party or late-night hotel shenanigans, and you get to sleep around 12-3AM. The vast majority of sleep is attained on the bus as we travel from place to place. So trying to find the drive & time for a workout is also near impossible.
So here’s what ended up going down (links all lead to workout pics):
Day 1:
- Arrive 8:30AM, travel all day, no workouts.
Day 2: - Up at 5:30AM for 6:45AM wakeup call on 3 hours of sleep, consider sneaking out of hotel for a run, but don’t. Instead, 1 hour yoga session, pushups, situps.
- Given 2 hours to get ready for the evening, I sneak out of the hotel in Jerusalem for a very hilly, fast 30 minute tempo run.
Day 3: - Saturday (Sabbath in Israel )…one of the only opportunities of free time in the morning. Up at 9AM, sneak out, 90 minute rolling hills tempo run, followed by 1 hour yoga & pushups.
**Day 4: ** - Jerusalem all day/night, no time for workouts (recovery day)
**Day 5: ** - Arrive at hotel in Tiberias at 7:00PM, given 2 hours to get ready. Hotel has a pool!! and an abandoned exercise bike in the maintenance stair case!! 30 minutes on the bike, 20 minutes in the pool, sweet!
**Day 6: ** - Kayaking Jordan River, I jump in the river and swim 75% of it in my lifejacket. Probably 1 mile total swim with current, though I swam upstream a few times for fun.
- Back to the hotel at 7:00, another break to get ready, sneak in 45 minutes on the ghetto exercise bike that doesn’t even turn on.
**Day 7: ** - Wake up call is at 6:30AM, but I’m up at 5:30AM as the sun is about to rise. I run down about 500 feet elevation drop to the shores of the Sea of Galilee and run along the banks for the sunrise, then back. Took my camera with me and snapped some rad action pics +1.
- Drove down to Dead Sea (This is what I was most looking forward to)…Some facts: It was about 105 degrees outside, probably 90 in the water, extremely strong sulfuric smell, if you take one mouthful of water you become instantly dehydrated and need medical attention, if 1 drop of water gets in your eyes you will feel blinded. If you DARE take a piss or fart, God help you. As the rest of my group is floating about 10-20 feet from shore, I put on my goggles and say, ‘catch ya later’, and start my “world’s greatest pull workout” (see top center) across the massive swimming basin. It looked a hell of a lot shorter than it turned out to be to get from one side to the other. I had to be very careful about splashes, keeping my head completely out of the water, and of course, since I was floating, there was no need nor ability to kick. Once I got to the other side, I was feeling like a roasted turkey. I knew I had to get back and fast, my skin seriously felt like it was going to burn off. On the way back, I took a few drops up the nose, which felt like I was snorting wasabi. Finally I made it back and rinsed off after about 35-40 minutes of swimming. I was sure that I was going to be burnt to a crisp, but it turned out that since the sea is 1200 feet below sea level, the thick air does an incredible job or absorbing UV radiation, so you don’t get burnt at all. The burning sensation I felt was just the remnants of the salt. Anyways, quite the adventure.
- Later that night, we spent the night in the middle of the desert in a Bedouin Tent. By this time, my workout regimen had gathered lots of chatter and interest, and it was requested that I lead the group in a yoga session. I did my best to teach an abbreviated 30 minute Bikram class
Day 8: - Up at 2:00AM, drive to Masada for the sunrise. I claim that the 900 foot hike down Masada was a great workout.
- Drive to Eilat, 4 hours at the resort beach on the Red Sea. Best open water swimming I had ever experienced. Just a huge swimming area. Water is dark blue, yet perfectly clear, about 15 feet deep with lots of interesting crap on the bottom and fish swimming around, no waves, temp was a little warm, but whatever. I swam for probably 1.5 hours total, just loving every second of it.
- While getting ready for the night, I turned on the TV and randomly one channel was showing highlights from an Israeli Triathlon. I had one of the IDF soldiers who was on our trip translate the hebrew for me. This was very entertaining.
Day 9: - Drove to Tel Aviv, checked into hotel around 5:00PM, Hotel had a small gym with an elliptical, treadmill, and exercise bike, but closed at 6:00, so I decided to just get in a quick sweat on the elliptical and finished with 25 hard minutes on the exercise bike.
Day 10: - Another Sabbath = some free time, so I was up at 8:30AM, 45 minute tempo run along Tel Aviv Beachwalk. (Amazing run)
- Back to the beach in the afternoon, 1st the Dead, next the Red, now the ‘Med’ I figured I had been doing enough swimming already so I took it easy here.
Days 11 & 12: - Too lazy to do anything else…Recovery & Return to the states
So in summary, despite the insane itinerary, I managed to sneak in 4 decent running workouts in amazing locations (completely violating the ‘stay with the group’ rule), 5 swimming workouts (3 of which were AWESOME), 3 halfway-decent spins on workout bikes, and a hodge-podge of yoga, situps, pushups, hiking, etc.
And then I got back home to Gainesville, immediately came down with a nasty bug (definitely fueled by my lack of sleep for 12 days), and spent the next week struggling to just get out of bed.
Figures.
Anyways, see you all in Panama City Beach on Halloween!
-TR3VOR
The crackpot (I doubt he’s still alive, but the house and “country” is still a “commune”) used to even stamp your passport for you! Mine’s got his stamp and the customs guys back at Ben Gurion airport liked to give you a hard time over it since you don’t have an exit/entry visa showing you left and came back into Israel: 