I left for my spring break via the Cairo Airport on the night of April 9. There was only one flight I could take from Cairo to Amman if I wanted to be on time for the Dead Sea 50k/31 mile Ultramarathon, since my economics professor gave us an exam on the last day before break. Luckily my flight was on time and I arrived in Amman around 11:30pm. The flight was only an hour long, but I lost an hour due to time zone differences between Egypt and Jordan.
Arrival in Jordan couldn't have been easier. Currency exchange, visa, immigration, and customs took me all of fifteen minutes, thanks to small size and efficiency of the airport. My next challenge was locating a taxi, since Queen Alia Airport is 35km outside Amman. A few guys tried to rip me off, but I wasn't going to fall for that again like I did my first night in Cairo. I settled on a fair 15JD ride into downtown, surprisingly, with a travel agent. When I told him I was looking for a hotel, he drove me up to the Faris Wings Hotel just off King Hussein Street near downtown. He may have had a connection to the hotel staff, but I didn't care much because I needed to find a place quickly. The room was 20JD per night (a little under $30).
I needed a small meal before bed, so I walked around King Hussein Street. My first thought was, "where are all the people?" Perhaps I was used to being able to get something late in New York City or Cairo, but after walking around for a half hour in Amman I probably only saw half a dozen people. Virtually no shops or stores were open, and so I had to settle for some juice at the one coffee stand that I saw open.
Downtown Amman at night was underwhelming. Apparently the more exciting parts to be in at night are the wealthier districts on the outskirts, like Shmeesani.
I went to sleep around 3am and this is when I realized how dirty the hotel was. It was certainly not worth even a fraction of the nightly rate, and I would not recommend that anyone stay there. I think I may have been the only one staying in the whole hotel.
I woke up at 5am and got my stuff together before taking a taxi (with a friendly taxi driver) to the 7th Circle. There I met another American student who is studying in Amman for the year, as I had arranged for him to pick up my race number and chip earlier that week since I wasn't able to.
When we arrived at the meeting place for the marathon, there was utter chaos. I soon found out that we had to take buses to get to the starting line, but I had to ask around in my broken non-Jordanian Arabic to find out which one to take. There were thousands of people there, most of them teenagers who were running the 10km race. I soon found out that the bus to the 50k race had already left and the attitude of all the race officials I told was basically "oh well." This was frustrating. I jumped on the half marathon bus, and when I realized I was nowhere near the 50k starting point, I got out and one of the other Jordanian runners explained my situation to one of the traffic officers. The officer tried to help, but he basically just told me to get a ride in the other direction.
So there I waited in my shorts and t-shirt on the side of the road until a minibus driver picked me up. I explained to him in my best Arabic that I didn't know where I was going, but I needed to get to the start of the race. The situation must have looked ridiculous. At this point, I thought I was almost 40 minutes late for the race, but I soon saw the lead pack of the 50k heading in the other direction, not too far from the start. I got out and had to ask around where exactly the starting line was (since there were no markings). When I found it, I set my watch and began running. That was a relief.
If you want to read the gritty details of the race, you can read the post in my training blog, though it won't be particularly interesting for non-runners.
Suffice it to say that the run was tremendous. Although it was run entirely on a highway, it was very picturesque and enjoyable. I had brought my camera to the race, but I put it in the luggage bag, not my running backpack. Within 20 minutes I had already passed the back of the pack, and I realized that the ultra had started a half hour late, so I was only about 15 minutes late for the race.
One of the best parts of the race was the buses. Somewhere between 10k and 30k, buses full of Jordanians drove by every minute or so, some full of children, some filled with adults. They would beep their horns, clap, cheer, and shout yella ("let's go") or ijra besur'a ("run faster").
The security for the race was pretty tight. Traffic cops were posted every 400m or so, and every 1k or so there were police captains and special police. Unlike the police in Egypt, the police in Jordan actually have a high degree of professionalism and look like they take their jobs seriously. The traffic police wear the Roman legion-type helmets with the spike on the top, and the special police were replete with berets, bulletproof vests, urban camouflage, and machine guns. At one point along the run near the West Bank border, there must have been a sensitive area, since both sides of the street were flanked by a wall of special police. It felt like I was the President arriving in a foreign country.
The last 10k was brutally hot, as the Dead Sea came into sight. This region was less developed than the area around Amman, so villagers came out and were intrigued to know what was happening. A group of kids (probably Palestinian) had a conversation with me while I was running along and challenged me to race them.
I ended up finishing on my watch in 4:58:02 (though because I was late, the official time is recorded as 5:15, though it doesn't reflect my actual performance). It's not a tremendous time, but I am satisfied I finished.
I met another American during the race who was running the standard marathon, and so after the race I went with her and her friends to the beach at the Dead Sea Marriott, which was a few kilometers from the finish line.
First, we applied the Dead Sea mud, which is supposed to have miraculous healing powers on the skin. My skin was sunburned from the race, so I'm not sure if it actually did anything. Then I walked slowly into the Dead Sea and I was waist-deep before I had to jump out practically writhing in pain. The ultramarathon had left my thighs chafed and badly swollen, and the extreme salinity of the water caused excruciating pain. I can say I was in the Dead Sea, but I didn't get to float in it.
Here's the lowest place on Earth.
Covered in Dead Sea mud.
The Dead Sea
I found someone to take me back to Amman that night. I got some food at Hisham's, which is a renowned 24-hour diner-type Jordanian establishment, which only serves ful, hummus, falafel, and tea, all of which was very good.
Amman is a city of hills, and even though my hotel was a few blocks away from the main street in Downtown, it was situated on a high hill and I had to take about 200 stairs to get to it.
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