April 2027 · Book tie-in: Indonesia / Saudi Arabia / Passport Countries · Psalm 23:2–3
Here’s how you become a better, stronger, smarter runner today — by taking your shoes somewhere unfamiliar and letting the road show you who you are without your routine.
Imagine running in a country where nobody expects to see a runner. The road is different. The air is different. The stares are different. And somehow, the run is better for all of it.
Over thirty years of international work I’ve laced up in a long list of places — Pretoria, Delhi, Mexico, Singapore, Milton Keynes, Indonesia, Jeddah, nearly forty American cities, Guangzhou, and twelve European countries in a single December. Travel changes running. Running changes travel.
Jeddah: the ten-kilometre rectangle
In Jeddah you run early or you don’t run at all. By eight the air is thick. By ten the pavement is too hot to touch.
I had a route: out of the apartment block, past the hotel and a mosque, then a long road with traffic on the left and flat, dusty lots on the right. Two and a half kilometres up. Right turn into the rising sun. Two and a half east. Right again. Five kilometres straight home. A neat rectangle.
Every morning I came back drenched, and every morning Noor, the night-shift man at the hotel desk, handed me my key and shook his head — this man is mad. He spoke no English. I spoke no Arabic. In the evenings he’d invite me to watch football in the lobby and bring food. We communicated entirely in whether the shot went in or not. Some of the best company of my Saudi years started with a sweaty runner walking past a front desk.
You don’t get friendships like that from the hotel gym.
Indonesia: air you can chew
Running in Indonesia was like nothing else. The heat was physical before seven. The humidity made the air thick enough to chew. By the second kilometre I was soaked.
I ran anyway, because the problems I carried out the door came back different. Not solved — different. Cleaner-edged. At the time I was stuck in a business situation that felt like a wall. By the time I got back to the hotel each morning, the wall had become a more specific question. That’s what a run in a strange place does: it forces you out of your head and into the present.
When you don’t run
Honesty matters here. In Erbil, in northern Iraq, running was not recommended — high walls everywhere, a region still capable of anything. For once I listened. A smart traveller-runner knows the difference between adventure and recklessness.
Guangzhou: the silent city
One morning stands above all the others. Guangzhou, 2023, running along the Binjiang Xi by the river. A massive city. Towers everywhere. Traffic in huge numbers beside me — and almost complete silence. The cars were electric. Only tyres on tarmac.
Years before I had visited Chinese factories where workers slept on cardboard beside machines at lunch. Now I was running through a city full of technology Europe was still debating. A thought arrived on that run that could never have come to me sitting at a desk: the world doesn’t wait for your opinion while it changes.
Green pastures in unlikely places
“He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters, he refreshes my soul.”
— Psalm 23:2–3
The Saudi chapter of Try Again sits under this verse — which is funny, because there’s very little green in Jeddah. But that’s the point. Peace isn’t always a landscape. Sometimes it’s a dawn rectangle of dusty road, a quiet man at a front desk, and a body moving at the speed of breath.
Practical: how to keep running when you travel
- Pack the shoes first. Everything else can be bought at the airport.
- Run the first morning. It resets your body clock faster than anything and shows you the neighbourhood.
- Go early. In hot countries, before seven. Everywhere else, early is simply safer and quieter.
- Use simple routes. Out-and-back or a rectangle with few road crossings. Don’t get lost in a city whose language you can’t read.
- Ask the locals. Hotel staff know where the parks are — and where not to go.
- Respect the culture. Dress appropriately. In conservative countries, cover up more than you would at home.
- Carry ID and a phone. I learned this the hard way. The morning I broke my ankle in Jeddah I had no phone on me and an empty street around me.
- Keep the streak. If you’re doing the Make 365 Days Count challenge, travel is the ultimate test. A 5K around a hotel car park still counts.
- Pack your goggles. Many hotels have a pool even when the streets aren’t runnable. From Runner to Efficient Swimmer shows runners how to make those lengths calm and efficient instead of a gasping struggle.
The broader point
The tourist sees the sights. The runner sees the city waking up — the bakers, the street sweepers, the call to prayer, the fishermen, the commuters. The runner who travels sees more than the tourist who doesn’t run.
And strangely, you also see more of yourself. When your routine is gone — your usual loop, your usual coffee, your usual people — what’s left is the part of you that simply goes out and runs.
Your action step
This month, run somewhere new — a new town, a new park, even the other side of your own city. Leave the headphones at home. Pay attention.
Then answer:
What did I notice today that I would have missed in a car?
Take it easy, and God bless.
— Heiko