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The 32nd Tiberias Marathon / The doggedness of the long-distance runner By Uri Telshir and Steve Klein Tags: Israel news, sports If there's one race South Africa-born Israeli marathon runner Laurice Mendelowitz would like to forget, it's the 2006 Rotterdam marathon. Mendelowitz, then 46, hoped to complete the run in less than three hours by making the most of the fair Dutch spring weather and the course's ideal flat surface. But somehow everything ended up going differently than expected. "A 27-degree temperature awaited the marathon runners," she recalls. "A European runner who stood beside me feared the heavy heat, but I bragged about running races in Beit She'an during heat-waves - I wasn't bothered by the weather at all." But the scorching heat caught Mendelowitz off guard. About 15 kilometers into the race she was struck by pain. "I stopped by the side of the road and was writhing in pain, but I forced myself to finish the race," she says, recalling the ordeal. "I made it past the finish line but felt awful. They took me to the first-aid stand and treated me." Mendelowitz did not suffer any serious injuries, but many other runners did. "It looked like a battleground: There were ambulances, casualties and even one person died. The headlines the following day read 'marathon massacre.' I was traumatized and was scared what might happen to me the next race." Advertisement It wasn't the first time Mendelowitz soldiered on during a marathon despite intense physical pain. Four years ago she participated in the Tiberias marathon dragging an injury. "Half way through I felt the pain begin," she recounts. Her husband Peter, who was riding his bicycle beside her and saw the torment in her eyes, begged her to stop. "I ran and cried but did not stop and kept pulling myself." She finished that race with a disappointing result and serious pain, but showed she had drive. "I'm not sure next time Peter tells me to stop I will agree," she says. "I feel I know my body's limits and keep checking myself. But if I think I'm causing damage and the time I'm aiming for is out of reach, then I might stop. At least that's what I currently think - during a race I might feel differently." Joburg Jew Mendelowitz grew up in Johannesburg, where sport was the furthest thing from her life. She says that sport was dominant in school, but that she - like most other girls in her school - gave "any reason to get out of sport." She adds, "When I think back it was crazy, giving up a day in the pool." Mendelowitz, who has lived in Israel for 25 years, admits that long-distance running is in her blood. Her father, Bunny Bolnick, and her brother, Ami Bolnick, are both marathon runners. Ami, in fact, ran both the 89km Comrade's marathon - the world's oldest and largest ultramarathon - and the 56km Two Oceans marathon spanning the South African coast between the Indian and Atlantic oceans. Despite her family pedigree, she caught the running bug only late in life, aged 39, when a friend offered to join her on a jog along the beach. "I agreed and told her I would walk and she'd run," she says. At the time Mendelowitz's sporting activity culminated in some aerobic exercise. "Maybe it was the sea and it's energies that did something, made me run and enjoy it. I got hooked and next time I no longer hesitated joining." In no time she found herself running her maiden long-distance run, a 12-kilometer course near Tiberias. She attended that run among other things to experience the atmosphere at the event. Suddenly she was overwhelmed by a competitive instinct. "I saw someone pass me and wanted to overtake her to see if I still had it in me," she says. "I ran past her and those ahead of her." She drove back to her home in Kochav Ya'ir and forgot about the whole thing. But the following day she received a call from a friend who attended the award ceremony and accepted the third-place price for her age category on her behalf. Within a year she had worked her way up to running marathons. At the last Tiberias marathon she managed to shatter the three-hour boundary for the first time. Today the 48-year-old mother of two will hope to shave a few more seconds off her personal best, and maybe take advantage of the absence of marathon runner Nili Abramski to take first place. But Mendelowitz, who is an aerobics instructor in Kochav Yair, is cautious not to come across as overambitious. "My ambition was always to break the three-hour boundary," she says. "I though I'd calm down after that, but now I still want to improve. I can feel it in my feet." Whether or not she improves her personal best time, one thing she knows for sure is that this will not be her last marathon. "I plan on running for as long as I can," she vows. "I don't know how many more years I can remain competitive, but in any case I won't stop running. It's an important part of me. It's my oxygen, my daily meditation." Bookmark to del.icio.us   Fallen hero Relatives mourn Maj. Roey Rosner, 27, killed Wednesday by Gaza militants. On the northern front Hezbollah denies responsibility for two rockets fired at Israel from Lebanon.   1.   Tiberias Marathon 15:24  |  Joseph 08/01/09   2.   ultramarathons 20:07  |  steve 08/01/09

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