What I've learnt from running the many marathons of the Middle East

Standing in a makeshift warm-up area in a Damascus car park before dawn, the group limbered up to pop music blasting from speakers. After sunrise, we crossed the start line and sped towards Umayyad Square, the gathering point for so many celebrations of the Assad family’s relatively recent fall. For a few hours on that Friday morning in September, it was part of marathon route in a changed Syria.

If you had told me a year ago that I would be running 42.2km in the Syrian capital, I would have laughed and cried. Bashar Al Assad’s regime only let tourists into the country on strictly controlled tours, and being a journalist made securing a visa to the country all the harder. His security forces carved the city’s streets apart with road blocks and checkpoints, making the idea of going for a jog a grim prospect in any case.

But earlier this year, amid a group of beaming, enthusiastic Syrian runners, I did complete a Damascus marathon. It was an example of how much Syria has changed in the past year.

I have run more than a dozen marathons and half marathons throughout the Middle East, Turkey and Iran. Plus training, my back of the envelope calculation is that I’ve run over 2,000km in cities from Erbil to Istanbul to Beirut. Each running event has been a window into the contemporary political moment, each city's streets a reflection of its residents’ current woes and joys.

People shop in the Old City market in Damascus, Syria. Getty Images

In the case of Syria, it started like this. I had seen an advert for the marathon online, organised by some keen Syrian runners with the blessing of the Sports & Youth Ministry. I booked and paid via an app set up for events bookings across the country. Comedy nights were also among the somewhat sparse listings.

At the end of September, my partner and I boarded a flight from Istanbul and a couple of hours later we were in Damascus, ready for the 42km run the next day. To celebrate his first time in Damascus (he is half-Turkish and had not visited before), I took him out for a drink. We wandered the city as tourists, enjoying it as foreigners and Syrians alike should always have been able to. I collected my race bib number, which came with a T-shirt bearing the slogan: “The road to peace”.

The route was guarded by gun-toting members of the new securi