You don't eat meat? I'll make lamb then.

Traditions and rituals are where the comfort is

I like to call it "our mountain". It isn't of course, but generally we are the only ones on it. Now that it is Spring there are a few hunters that watch their hounds chase hares and then leave disposable coffee cups next to

their parked vehicles. Generally though we hardly see anyone. Up on a small promontory half way up the mountain sits a small squat stone Byzantine church. It is inhabited by a solitary monk, who maintains the small grounds and I am sure all the other duties that go with a life of quiet servitude. Every evening a small enclosed shrine is lit and it is the only flicker of light to be seen on the mountain. The church catches the morning light before the shadows retreat lower down to the stream below. On late summer afternoons its stones seem to throb a warm pink as the shadows gradually encircle it. I find it intensely satisfying to look upon. No matter whether I run by early in the morning, midday or bob along by head torch much later. I am not sure what it is about it that always pauses me to reflect as I am not religious. I think it is the idea that I am looking at time, a visible thread back to a time many hundreds of years.

Traditions are like lighthouses in a way, they are focused points of ritual and collective memory. They shed light on why we do the things we do, how we feel and react. Growing up in the New World (I only get to call it that because I now live in one of the great cities of antiquity) traditions were family made or borrowed from our forbears that settled only as far back as 1821. It is a ridiculously short span of time, but nevertheless traditions do form and are quickly prized. Rituals are similar and feed into traditions and can be anything. The smell of linseed oil will forever remind me of the start of cricket season, much the same way that the leather of a baseball mitt must for others. It is a momentary but satisfying association with a time past.

I decided on a long run up Mount Pendeli on Easter Sunday. Pendeli looms above Athens at just over 1100m. It has been ravaged by miners for its prized marble since antiquity and is famous for providing the marble for the Parthenon. Yet with 164 modern and ancient quarries, the nearside flank to Athens has a sunken and pockmarked appearance. Despite it sounding as appealing as a close up of Ray Liotta's face it is an intriguing part of the mountain to explore with rough stone chipped paths and empty quarries, hidden churches and even older shrines to gods long past. There is a sense of time all around.


When I first for got here I was amazed that Easter was a bigger holiday and religious event that Christmas. I can see why now. The season is changing and the hills are bursting with life and colour. Winter, unless you have a white December is dull and grey with the Christmas holiday as a beacon amongst the shortest and darkest of the year. Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere is an odd affair with northern European style Christmas trees and cheery Father Christmas's sweating profusely in their faux red winters outfit. Commercialisation has also become associated with the holiday. I shudder at my often desperate and self-loathing filled last minute shopping trips on Christmas Eve. The whiff of Christmas is first felt when the shops start with the carols and decorations in October. Comparatively, most Easter panic buys are more food, charcoal and extra chairs.


Socks again?

Easter in Greece has a slow inexorable build up that mirrors Spring the closer you get to Easter Sunday. It starts with a meat feast and then a prescriptive Orthodox fasting for lent begins where animal products are sequentially prohibited for the 40 day period until once again another meat feast on Easter Sunday. It is not a token giving up of small pleasures that happen elsewhere. Even McDonalds has had to bend its ways and it provides a special Lenten menu. The culmination of lent is a celebratory day of feasting (usually an entire lamb) and music. The smell of roasting lamb, sounds of music and fussing Greek mothers are common in wherever neighbourhood you are in. It is a day of richness in time, food and family that I find so appealing as a tradition. That is not to say that Christmas has none of these elements, it does, it is just is a richer and more drawn out experience. It may be that it is a better holiday because no one has to pretend that they are happy to have received a pair of socks or a new steaming iron. It is not a day for vegetarians and the gross tonnage of lamb consumed and charcoal burnt must be astronomical. Animals are imported from all the neighbouring countries to satisfy the demands of the celebration. It surely must be happiest day of the year in Greece because Greeks are at their happiest when sat round a dinner table.


It's in the mail

As a tradition I particularly like the service before Easter Sunday to celebrate the resurrection of Christ. Church goers share a flame in the church and carry it back to their homes. It is a touching service to behold. The journey of the flame to each church is an interesting one. It starts off in Jerusalem, in the church of the Holy Light. The Orthodox Patriarch kneels before a marble slab and a flame miraculously appears. This has happened for centuries. This flame is then shared and spread throughout the church. Much like the tour of the Olympic Flame, this too is flown to Athens in a specially chartered plane. News programmes routinely show the aircraft landing with the Holy flame. It goes a long way to explain how important tradition is here and why the country has such poor control over its finances. But without the care and rigidity given to traditions they fall away. Somehow, and this is really the miraculous part because time keeping is not an inherent quality here but somehow the flame is shared throughout all the churches in the land. How they get it to all the islands and backwater villagers is beyond me but it is maintained that it is. If they indeed succeed in this feat I only wish it could be emulated by the post office. How and when my parcels arrive involve a process infinitely more mysterious and miraculous and always much much later than expected.


It is not only the pious attend a service that evening which concludes at midnight with the light being shared to the congregation. When we have opted to not attend the service we were reproached for breaking with tradition rather than out of piety. In true Greek fashion the great majority will arrive with 10 minutes to spare to light a candle and then rush back to enjoy a meal at home. I once attended a service where the priest implored the congregation not to leave once the light was shared as the service still had some important bits to cover. It helped not because in joyous celebration the church was emptied speedily and the sermon was drowned out by the crack and thumps of fireworks. Occasionally, where churches are within range, fireworks are aimed at each other resulting in a startled re-entry of the congregation back into the church. News segments the following day are usually quite entertaining. Life can never be entirely peaceful in Greece.


The Orthodox Church keeps an iron grip on tradition. There is no middle way found in other Christian Churches - there is just the way. There is no interpretation and debate. And that way has not changed since the very beginning. Services are still given in Byzantine Greek because that is the language of the early church. Of course most church goers have only a sketchy grasp of what is actually being said. But it is an unbreakable link to the past. Even if you do not know what is being said, you know that exactly the same thing was said in the same way hundreds of years ago. For the faithful and the traditionalists this can only be reassuring. It has also managed to stay clear from many of the pitfalls that the Catholic Church has fallen fowl of. Premarital sex is frowned upon but it has decided to pick its battles and look elsewhere. Condoms are allowed, its Priests can marry. Divorce is permitted and you are given the opportunity to marry and divorce up to three times. Four is considered taking the piss, but I think it is the church's recognition of the fact that a Greek mother-in-law is a difficult beast to manage and so some wiggle room is only fair to find more peaceable pastures.


If you hadn't already guessed by now, it is an overwhelmingly Christian country which makes it one of the few outliers in an increasingly sceptical Europe. Although its inhabitants are not what you would call pious in the protestant sense. Life carries on the way it does with humans, messily and with little guilt. The Orthodox Church is more of a reminder of who they are (Orthodoxy and Greekness are inextricably linked) rather than how they should be. No one wants to be lectured, lest of all Greeks and so the Church has stuck with ritual and tradition and it is the cornerstone of its longevity.


Icons are to be found everywhere. Growing up Protestant I still haven't got quite used to them. Go and sort something out at the Vodafone store and you will have some Saint peer balefully back at you while you query your bill. Visit the doctor's office and it is usually Madonna and Child that you share your consultation with. Of all the icons, it is they that I find at odds with a modern doctor's office. With the biological improbability of a virgin birth, it makes you wonder how much room the doctor is leaving for luck or divine second opinion. About the only place I can see an icon being useful is at the Greek Tax office because if there is anywhere that you are completely and utterly alone, it is there.

So you are a Gemini...

Curiously, despite the ever presence of the church here, you will never find a people more interested in what star sign you are. Unless you are foreign they know you are Orthodox (because there can be nothing else), but what they don't know is what position several celestial bodies were at the time of your birth and whether you would be compatible enough to go for coffee with.


What good has change ever done?

Anyone with an appreciation for history is grateful of a glimpse into the past, or something unchanged. The Parthenon is ever glorious, yet the sun bleached skeleton of a building that have now is a far shade from its gaudy and colourful past. It is hard to imagine and the link with a time 2500 years ago is faint. The Orthodox church has steadfastly remained the same, its buildings and interiors need to conform. There is no modernist intellectual architecture to contemplate, just a steady repeated living reminder of what they should and have always looked like ever since sandals were about the only footwear option going. And therein lies the comfort, whether it is right or wrong, it has managed before and will manage long after we are gone.


We find comfort in routine. It is the comfort of writing early in the morning with a cup of tea while the day brightens. Running likewise is full of routines that we knowingly and sometimes unknowingly follow. It is the comfort of running a trail, sometimes quickly, sometimes just to be there, sometimes to just feel restored. It may be the smell of brewing coffee and a bowl of oats before a long run. The feel of quiet on an early morning outing. It is why we always stop at a particular spot, to mark our times or just to take time out to take in the senses. It is something we cannot help but enjoy, even unknowingly.


I know that one day when I leave Greece, the smell of thyme will instantly be associated with my dry and dusty mountain and my heart will quiet and I will be back there for a brief moment. Traditions are those momentary connections with something past. Perhaps it is because we know nothing of the future, but the past at least, we can see like a trail of breadcrumbs behind us that slowly get swept up by time.

Where the goats refuse to roam

Goats and free range Greeks

The kind of land you end up living in determines your perspective and who and what you are. We are connected to the environment. Mountains do something else entirely to a character and mountain people are different to the flat-landers. Greece is a sea and sun destination for the tourist, yet venture a little from the

shore and you will invariably head up and up. It is a crumpled land of mountains and only 20% of it is not considered mountainous if you want a statistical confirmation of how unlike Belgium it is. Almost anywhere here inland is where the mountains are and that is the rocky heart of the place...

This last weekend I ran a mountain race on the stunning Greek island of Hydra.  It lies just off the Peloponnese with steep grey flanks subsiding into the sea and only a handful of coves or bays to land a boat in. As a result only a small part of the island is populated...the rest is scrub and rock and goats. The only approach to the island is by boat. Its rocky prominence is Mount Eros. Bobbing towards the little port town of Hydra I wondered why it was called Mount Eros. It is an attractive name and it certainly was from afar and I looked forward to the race that would take in its summit. Perhaps the name stuck because of sailors who spent too long at sea and so predictably viewed any landmass containing a bulge, or any protuberance for that matter, to have some lusty association. 

Approaching Hydra

Mountains shape peoples, sometimes confine them and sometimes protecting them. The Scots, the Basques, or the Swiss are a few of many independent minded mountain dwellers. Hannibal is more commonly known for crossing the Alps with some very unfortunate elephants rather than marching all over Italy for a decade and a half like a rogue termite. His story is a far more interesting one than that, yet it is this primary school factoid that remains with you always. Despite his cunning and tactical nous, the mountains almost broke his army. Only a handful of shuffling elephants survived. It is not for nothing that when you think of mountain men the image that leaps to mind is one of wild eyes and wilder beards. 

Where the goats refuse to roam

Later the next morning, the race went very well and I quickly moved up the field as we rolled out of the paved streets and onto the trails. Until we hit the bony spine of Eros.

From afar, I remembered thinking that it's grey flanks looked mysterious and beautiful. Up close there was nothing lovely about it. It was like running up and over a large mound of shattered rock. In the heat of the day, the sun bounced back sending the temperatures soaring. Not even the goats ventured this far up. Given the choice of continuing further they would promptly opt to be spit and roasted right then and there and with a spring of rosemary for good measure. On the exposed and unrelenting grey rock Mount Eros showed me a rather unwanted kind of love and I vowed that I never go to prison. It was this part of the trail race where I began to realise why Greece is the way it is. It is because of its mountains. This is about as much of my race that you'll hear because race reports are often where paint goes to dry. 

There are few modern countries with links as ancient as Greece where the land of their forebears is still in their hands and its language is still spoken. Italy at the start of their reunification in 1861, only about 2.5% of people spoke what we recognise as Italian - almost lost. Those of the Levant are gone as are others that ringed the Mediterranean. Despite Greece being the cradle of western civilisation it has been more or less continually occupied since it's lofty heights. Romans, Goths, Huns, Slavs, Franks have all had a turn at the helm and later a rather lengthy stay by the Turks. It is only since 1830s that Greeks have been ruled by Greeks and then not even all of Greece as we now know it. 

The question that puzzled me was: why could no one hang on to the place? 

You'd want him on your side too. 

Greece's lengthy visitors are never able to stay indefinitely - they are eventually worn out. Despite its beauty or strategic value it just cannot be held. The only reason is, and I can say this with unequalled authority because I have lived amongst them, are its beguiling yet utterly confounding and irksome people. And the mountains have something to do with it. 

Never mind the Romans, lets start more recently with the Venetians. The Venetians held several islands and controlled swaths of the mainland. The coastal city of Nafplio is perhaps the best example of their lingering Italian charm and it boasts an exquisite square which makes this city one of the most attractive of Greek cities. 

Perhaps just a little too peaceful

Quite why this idea of spacious squares never caught on elsewhere in Greece is a mystery because if there ever was a people more predisposed to whittle away huge amounts of time over coffee it is the Greeks. The Italians, another coffee loving nation seem positively twitchy with their espressos taken quickly on the hoof. The Greek equivalent of the square can be any shape, purposefully chaotic and is usually accessible from any direction by car. It is usually strewn with cars and cafe chairs - this makes it highly attractive to the car and coffee loving Greeks and to almost no one else. The spacious and genteel air of an Italian square is just too far from one's car to ever make a Greek feel truly comfortable. 

That's more like it: cars, dogs, pigeons, noise.

Do you know what the time is, or the month is for that matter?

The absurd Greek relationship with time is well known. They pride themselves on inventing cold coffees like cold frappe's and iced cappuccinos. It is because I don't think any Greek has ever managed to drink an entire cup of coffee without it going cold. A Greek can nurse a coffee in the amount of time other people manage to put their children through primary school. The ancient Greek calendar used to revolve around the span of time between Olympic games and cups of coffee drunk. 

Aside from the beautification of the town, the Venetians also set about extensively renovating, extending and beautified the castle that sits above the town. They just can't help themselves. Strategically it was an important town, but a castle needs to look good you know what I am saying? Eventually the Italians grew weary of the Greeks trying to park their donkeys and horses haphazardly about the Square and when the Ottoman Empire came knocking they found an easy way out and without much fuss handed over the keys to the city and smirked all the way back to Venice where they could enjoy their squares in peace. 

It is because of the Greeks that the Venetians could not have nice things

Make yourself comfortable

The Ottomans stayed for much longer. They too have a fondness for coffee and chairs as well as velvety foot stools. A perfect combination and hence they made themselves comfortable for the next 400 years. But - who leaves a country after 400 years? That is the life span of 8 family members if they all lived on average of 60 years. Most family trees struggle to go back four generations. It is an even longer time period than the combined New World European histories of South Africa and Australia.  It is just short of the time from when the English first tried to colonise Ireland and well, that northern bit of the island will never be the way it was. Nor will that place be after those first pilgrims left Plymouth and landed at the other Plymouth. You would think that after such a protracted period, the yoke of occupation would be accepted and people would adapt to a new normal with altered customs, beliefs and language. But the Greeks on the other hand weathered them out and after four centuries and several cups of coffee decided to revolt.  


Every man is an island

Even after the initial success of the 1821 revolution, the Greeks turned on each other and two consecutive civil wars followed. They practically undid the progress of the revolution. A similar deadly sequence of events happened after they had fought against the Axis Forces in WWII. It is a difficult place to govern whether you are Greek or not. The new Greek Republic managed to last only four years before the first Greek Prime Minister was assassinated. Even if the people are indebted to your service it is not a guarantee that you will avoid a bullet or jail like one of the most influential of generals in the revolution against the Turks was. It is a land of heated passions and certainly not politically a land of moderates. It is jokingly said that there is the extreme right, the extreme left and then the extreme centre. The problem with running for several hours is that you have the time to think about these sorts of things.


Please sit down...

Aside from the obvious problems of extreme Greek politics and a different comprehension of time, another main reason for the downfall of their unwelcome visitors is that Greeks have stamina. They have oodles of it. Something Eros was teaching me was that I didn't. When Greeks attack a cafe or a restaurant the amount of time that they spend there would sometimes be misunderstood as an occupation in other countries. Any occasion to sit and eat or drink with a Greek requires huge amounts of stamina. Try and leave early and you are in trouble. Strangely it is not a problem how late you arrive. Aggressively hospitable is what the Greek comedienne Katerina Vrana calls her people. I have yet to last a full meal here successfully as after 4 hours I have to retire in exhaustion. I seem to lose all track of time and I get the distinct feeling that we have started another meal within the first meal because the food never stops coming. I have stopped eating with Greek people for fear of developing deep vein thrombosis. Brian Church, an English writer who after several years could no longer take the extended meals dryly penned that if there were any Greeks in attendance at the Last Supper, Easter would instead be celebrated in October.  


Be it on your balls

Greece's politicians spend a great deal of time smoking, debating, shouting and passing many laws. Most of these laws are considered and are then ignored (and that is just the Police). Advise any Greek on the street politely on the correct order of a queueing system or that parking in the disability bay is frowned upon,  at least in the legal sense, it will quickly escalate into a heated argument where you are informed that they will write your gripes on their balls. This is a genuine reply, often used yet unhelpfully not found in any language guide book.  

Learn it, it is one of language's great gems:  (Σε γραφω) στ' αρχιδια μου. 

I struggle to imagine how it came into popular parlance but it is nonetheless bluntly illustrative of the care your gripe is given. 


It's not me it's you

The point is, it is the telling that causes the problem, not whether you are right. Even if they know you are right you will still be shouted and wildly gesticulated at. Greeks make life difficult for Greeks too. And these are the people that have been voted in to run the country. Many outside of this country view Greeks as tax evaders. Whilst there are those that do enjoy that particular pastime, it is an unfair stereotype and it is really that Greeks hate visiting the tax office. And I for one heartily concur. The sheer unhelpfulness of the public servants or the maddening paperwork bonds a particular hatred of the State by most people. When trying to get out marriage certificate recognised in Greece, because we were not married in an Orthodox church were told to go and get letter from the Anglican Archbishop. I don't think he does that sort of thing, but that is the sort of thing you are told to write on your balls. 

The answer is up there...

British cartographers had long surveyed all the mounds on their island before industriously setting off to chart some actual mountains, the Himalayas. They established the height of Mount Everest in 1856. Greek cartographers addressed their blank contour free patches on the map as the 'unwritten areas' and set about ordering another round of coffees. It was only after a particularly lengthy evening meal that they finally got around to clearing up their own backyard. A national land registry only came into being in 2010. Time is like a volcano in Greece, there are long periods of inactivity then violent outbursts where everything should have been done yesterday, but then they realise that they had already done them 2000 years ago and then wonder what is for dessert. 


Be it in your head

These unwritten areas in some of the craggiest places in Northern Greece remained free throughout the Ottoman's 400 year rule. A fact immediately telling of its inhabitants and the environment. Once passing through a small village we stopped off to buy some of its famed smoked cheese. In the shop was an article proudly mentioning the museum exhibit of four stuffed heads - bandits that had been caught rustling livestock. This sort of custodial practice is now frowned upon, and even the truculent British Museum agreed to send some of their pried Maori heads home. It was a wild place and it still feels that way. 

Even in peaceable times, the police are routinely ambushed in Crete if they venture into areas that are high up and are engaged in something illicit or untaxable. The mountains are where the heart is and it neigh on impossible to dislodge it. It is why Greeks still speak Greek after having other people mind their business for nearly 2000 years. It is why the Welsh with their valleys speak English.

Greece's recent unwanted visitors are the Troika, the group who are from their perspective trying to help Greece out from its financial mess. They have been met with resistance all along the way. I can only wonder at what the Troika officials have found on their visits. The thing is they too have been worn out, the changes that they have made will never be lasting. The European officials for all their suggestions will just leave with them written somewhere private. 

For such a sociable people it is hard sometimes to work out whether a behaviour that is so antisocial such as smoking, reckless driving or just parking wherever one may choose to is seen as an unalienable liberty or a small act of defiance against being told what to do. And this is why Greece will always be free, or trapped or neither but it importantly it will always be Greek.

What yellow lines? Greeks invented the drive through, and even if the 

facility is unavailable they will still park as close as possible to the entrance

Want a taste?

If you want to do a race that encapsulates Greece, the Hydra Trail is the one to do it. The other thing to do is learn the phrase: (Σε γραφω) στ' αρχιδια μου. 

You start in the old port, running up through slate paved streets and white washed walls, through terraced hills, through forests and then finally climbing along it's ridges.. You will pass by abandoned farm houses, past working monasteries. All the while with the blue Aegean all around. From sea to sky, it is a race that starts at the water's edge and takes you up the mountain. Beauty and harshness. If you only had a few hours which which to experience a country, this is way you should spend them. Who knows, you might find something up there in you. 

Nike Flyknit Racer

The Nike Flynit Racer

Nike is an impressive company. Like it or not they have changed most sports and if you are one of the frothing-at-the-mouth die-hard Minimalists, they have irrevocably changed the way we run for the worse. Innovation and change go hand in hand. Change is always a tough pill to swallow for a runner. Just as soon as you find a shoe that you feel finally works for you it is improved beyond all recognition from its frumpy but lovable and dependable self. Nothing really remains the same with Nike. Old favourites are just old and are done with and running in Nike shoes is a little bit like having an extra marital affair. It can be deliciously exciting though you know it will be short-lived and probably end in all sort so of boiled rabbits and poisonous recriminations. But then there is always something exciting around the corner...

That rambling preamble aside, the Nike Flyknit Racer is the shoe de jour, at least on this blog. London 2012 rolled around and the Flyknit was presented to the world as the business end of some incredibly fast Kenyans ( Whatever you do don't mention ze Meb). So I had to get me a pair, and they have been my favourite racing shoe since. Of course one must flirt with other shoes but this is the kind of shoe that you wheel out on special occasions. 

Putting them on after all the hype I was a little disappointed. The Flyknit did not feel the way I expected. They were snug yet roomy but it had not of the elastic stretch that you get from Ino8 or Zoots, or even the Nike Free line. The sole felt hard and I worried whether they would hold me for the distance of a marathon.I did the usual thing of running a few paces in the running store, that just made me look silly, but it did not make the shoes feel any better. Disappointed I decided that the Flyknit was really a trumped up tea doily with some rubber underneath but I bought them anyway. 

The genius behind the Flyknit technology - some designer's granny. 

I decided to test them on the track for a few tempo workouts and if they passed that test I would use them on a tough 25km round the island race on Spetses. If didn't they would be my colourful crochet coffee shoes for summer days. Something interesting about the shoe is that it feels clunky, hard and vaguely ill-fitting at slow speeds. But when you start running quickly the shoe become instantly forgettable and just part of your foot. I never had the slightest inkling of rubbing or a blister. They come in at a ridiculous 212 grams for a US 12, supported my foot well, and are extremely breathable. It is quite refreshing to feel the wind on your toes when you run. 

The Upper

The FlyKnit Racer is all about the upper. The upper is a brilliant piece of design, a solid knitted meshed that laced together by FlyWire, which holds your foot in place and the result is neat and simple upper with nothing extra thrown in. There are no strips of extra plastic to reinforce or support, it is all there provided in the mesh and wire. 

To some it up, the upper is light, supports your foot well and perhaps what I like best is how breathable it is. Races in Greece are often very warm affairs and this makes it ideal for warm weather running. I would even use these for up to Olympic distance triathlon because of the midsole support and outstanding breath-ability. 

Highly breathable - the light test 

The Sole

The sole is quite a chunky affair when compared to many other racing flats and it has a larger than common heel drop with its competitors. Even the Flyknit trainer has a less accentuated drop. However the drop is relative on this shoe. The foam used in the midsole is quite soft and the forefoot area rubber is a lot stiffer, meaning that when you wear them, your heel sinks in lower relative to your forefoot. This means the shoe performs more like a racing flat but with added cushioning. 

What I liked

• Lightweight - 212 grams for US 12
• Highly breathable
• Enough support and padding to last most runners through to a marathon
• The fibres are wound out of recycled polyester/PET bottles, the rubber on the outsole  is recycled too.

What I don't like but doesn't matter...

It is definitely built for a narrow foot shape and it is not for everybody. I would have preferred a wider forefoot and I don't like that the shoe draws to a point above your second toe. It is not a natural foot shape. 

But really, after all, this shoe does what it says on the tin. It is a performance shoe and it needs to be run in that manner. They are not meant for training miles or slow recovery runs - and they will let you know it. Move up a gear in speed and they smooth out considerably.

It is a shoe that is worn for an occasion.